A Times promotional email to professors reads: "To begin, please email me with a copy of your syllabus listing the New York Times as required reading."
By
Clay Waters
November 19, 2009 - 10:56am
Professor Scott Stein recently received [1] an email offer from the Times: Require his students to read the Times and get a free subscription.
Excerpt from the email (hat tip American Spectator [2]):
All faculty at [Name of university] are entitled to a complimentary subscription of the New York Times delivered to their home when the New York Times is listed in their syllabus as required reading. If 15 or more students subscribe, you will also receive a handsome portfolio as a free gift.
Help your students make discoveries every day in topics ranging from social trends and new technology to politics and the economy inside the nation's most honored newspaper....To begin, please email me with a copy of your syllabus listing the New York Times as required reading.
Stein commented in part:
Does anyone think marketing stunts are going to save newspapers? That forcing students to purchase them will create loyal long-term readers? That they won't go back to reading the news on their phones or laptops (or go back to ignoring the news entirely) the moment they are no longer required to buy the paper for class?....If a physical paper is preferred for some reason, why a subscription to just one paper? Why not have the students read a different paper or magazine each week, with different editorial slants?....Using one paper - particularly if politics or economics or some other controversial subject is being covered - is an invitation to accusations of bias and indoctrination. Professors should not be trying to get their students to think like the Times.