The New York Times reports on a mysterious sales spike that two local Long Island papers experienced last week, as mysterious buyers swooped in to grab every available copy from newsstands at $1.50 a pop. The papers had to print 64% more papers than usual to keep up with demand. The mysterious buyers were estimated to have snagged 4,000 out of the total 14,120 newsstand copies.
The owner of the papers speculated that the mysterious buyers could have been “someone involved in a truly monumental school project; someone really proud of their grandchild on the honor roll; someone with a great deal of precious glassware to pack; or, as I suspect, someone intent on suppressing the dissemination of a particular news story.” Suspicion seems to point toward associates of a local doctor accused of Medicare fraud.
Of course, this gesture was ultimately futile for a couple of reasons. First, since the papers were weeklies, the publisher was able to do another print run the next day and replenish the depleted stocks for other area buyers. Second, the stories were also posted to the paper’s web sites (see link in paragraph above).
And, perhaps most importantly, the papers themselves aren’t going to let them get away with it. A statement from Andrew Olsen, the papers’ publisher, said:
“We do have our suspicions as to who is behind this and if it’s someone attempting to somehow silence our coverage or make an uncomfortable story go away, they’re wasting their time and their money. We will not be silenced.”
(Found via TechDirt.)
