Now It’s "Green" to Say No to the Paper by the Door

Uh oh. Being green is starting to mean not reading that ‘free’ newspaper that’s left at the door of every Marriot and Holiday Inn across the land. Reuters reports that they get a huge discount from publishers so it’s not the money.

I remember meeting a woman at a conference who worked in circulation for USA Today, who said every single copy is paid for, and that hotel drops account for up to 50,000 of their daily circulation.

Marriot reports that in the interest of Mother Earth, they’ll no longer add the charge for the newspaper on each customers’ bill, since up to 25% of their guests don’t read the print editions. Even though they pay for them.

It’s a bad sign for newspapers when corporations are using the act of not passing the copies out as a green act of goodness. It makes environmentalists out of people who don’t read newspapers.

Uh oh, this is not good.