February 2009
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Day February 1, 2009

Entries 5 Total

Printing the NY Times vs a Kindle

An article on Silicon Alley Insider claims that the New York Times would be saving money if it were to buy every subscriber an Amazon Kindle. From the article:

According to the Times’s Q308 10-Q, the company spends $63 million per quarter on raw materials and $148 million on wages and benefits. We’ve heard the wages and benefits for just the newsroom are about $200 million per year.

After multiplying the quarterly costs by four and subtracting that $200 million out, a rough estimate for the Times’s delivery costs would be $644 million per year.

The Kindle retails for $359. In a recent open letter, Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis wrote: “We have 830,000 loyal readers who have subscribed to The New York Times for more than two years.” Multiply those numbers together and you get $297 million — a little less than half as much as $644 million.

While this makes sense it also seems to me that the Times would have more readers than 830,000. I’m just wondering if that number even accounts for all of the copies sold at Starbucks and other coffee shops every day. While it may be cheaper for the Times to get all of its subscribers Kindles I can’t believe it would actually be cheaper to get all of the people who read print editions of the Times a Kindle.

Link via Printing The NYT Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle.

Posted on February 1, ’09

A Follow-up on Michael Phelps

Andrew Sullivan apparently holds a similar opinion to the one that I voiced earlier concerning the ridiculousness that is the sports media’s concern over Michael Phelps smoking pot. Sullivan writes that:

Yes, Michael Phelps took a few hits from a bong at a party. He also threw back a great deal of alcohol, maybe made a few passes at a few girls and bonded with a few dudes. This is news?

And yet this absurd ritual takes place in which Phelps has to pretend he did something dreadful and we all have to tut-tut and frown and furrow our brows, and the sponsors cluck and the press preens – while the only conceivable news is that a 23 year-old had a good time at a party, breaking no professional rules since he was not competing when he was goofing off.

And, seriously, does anyone think that smoking pot would give him an unfair advantage in the pool? Please. When on earth are we going to grow up as a culture?

Agreed, now let’s all just let this story fade away and hope that the next time an athlete engages in activity that thousands of other Americans do every day the media (and bloggers) don’t even notice or hear about it.

Posted on February 1, ’09

Barney Frank Speaks Up

Rep. Barney Frank speaks up to a Republican who claims that President Obama’s stimulus package is just a way to disguise the largest government spending bill in history.

Good for him, and I wish more politicians in our country would say things like this on national television.

Posted on February 1, ’09

I’ve heard enough of the way is the final

I really like the lines and shadows of this photo. Looks like a staircase I would enjoy walking up. It also reminds me in a way of the famous stairway in the Vatican museums that I saw this summer. Click the photo to be taken to the Flickr page.

Posted on February 1, ’09

The Grand Canyon

 

found on Flickr

There is no way that enough photos can be taken of the Grand Canyon. When I went backpacking through it for five days I took over 600 and still feel like there’s shots that I missed out on.

Posted on February 1, ’09