The Examiner Home Delivery: Love It or Hate It?

Did you involuntarily get the Examiner this morning? Did you want it, along with your Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal? Judging from the buzz on numerous neighborhood listservs, the Examiner is some kind of modern day plague...like bedbugs.  People complain that they didn't want the Examiner, it's just more paper to recycle, it can't be easily stopped during vacations, and they don't care for its conservative perspective.

One annoyed homeowner put it this way, "Every Sunday the Washington Examiner is delivered to my home. The problem is that I don't want it, have never wanted it and am not even curious about it." And it's not just a DC problem: From coast to coast there are complaints. Baltimore and San Francisco have their own "Examiner problems," too.

To which I say, "Wait a second! Why not embrace the Examiner?" And here's why:  The Examiner covers local stories that the Post misses; the Examiner exposes you to a viewpoint that's not necessarily your own (assuming you're part of the vast Democratic majority in the District of Columbia.) You can actually get it stopped if you want -- the secret sauce is available through a Google search.  Sure, it's wrong to initiate home delivery without somebody first asking for it, and without information on how to stop the Examiner with the first issue.  But isn't that a minor transgression?

But most importantly, the Examiner is a newspaper. Remember those? Treat it kindly, because it may be in not so many years that paper newspapers will be just a memory. The New York Times even announced its own, eventual demise in print form.

Enjoy the newspaper, any newspaper, while you can.