Back in the olden days, when Barack Obama was president, I decided to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. I did that because I like to get a variety of opinions and insights, especially from people who are influential but consistently wrong. If their wrongness is going to influence my life, I’d like to know as soon as possible.

My preferred format for reading material is paper. Because I write most of the day every day, and do that on screens, I like to restrict reading, when possible, to paper. So I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal on paper, with delivery to my office.

And thus began my yearlong battle with the WSJ.

Because many days, it wouldn’t show up.

Oh, some days, it would be there. I’d arrive at my office, and there it’d be waiting for me on the doorstep, ready for perusal while I downloaded my coffee and breakfast. But then the next day, it wouldn’t be. So I’d notify people at the paper via their online customer complaint window, or whatever they call it, and someone there would cheerily notify me in return that they’d add another day to my subscription.

Except I didn’t want another day added to my subscription. I wanted the newspaper for that day. I actually wanted the news.

This may be the place where I’ll pause and state just how much I love the news. (Even when it’s terrible.) My parents always got the newspaper, and I started reading it at an early age. When I was 14, my sister noticed an ad in the Atlantic City Press (later renamed as “The Press of Atlantic City” in, I suppose, an effort to baffle people) for a part-time, after-hours classified ad agent. I called three times, with my 14-year-old squeaky boy voice, and finally persuaded the gentleman answering the phone and doing the hiring to at least see me. My mother drove me into Atlantic City to the newspaper’s offices, where I flawlessly passed a typing test, confidently fielded a couple of phone calls, typed up sample ads with aplomb, and against all odds became a 14-year-old boy hired to work alongside women in their 30s and 40s in an after-hours advertising department. All through high school, I worked 5 to 9 p.m., Monday through Friday, and thus always had plenty of money to take girls out. (Thanks, A.C. Press!)

While I was in college, I became editor of the college newspaper and also started freelancing for the newspaper chain Gannett. I wrote for the Mainland Journal, the Vineland Times-Journal, the Egg Harbor Journal, the Atlantic County Record, another paper that I can’t remember the name of, and often got distributed among the chain, so that my work appeared in the Detroit News (at the time the 7th largest newspaper in the nation) and other dailies and weeklies around the country. This was an exciting time for this 20-year-old.

After college, I was hired again by The Press of Atlantic City, this time in editorial, as a copy editor. The job entailed arriving at 4 p.m. (oh, the glory of a late shift for someone who has always hated mornings!), reading the newspaper front-to-back for a couple of hours, having dinner, and then editing copy and writing headlines for the next day’s edition. I loved that job, got promoted quickly, and only gave it up to move to Los Angeles and enter grad school. (The then-managing editor and my boss, Bob Ebener, very much in the cranky-but-lovable Lou Grant mold, was sure that I was lying and that the Philadelphia Inquirer was grabbing me up, and tried everything to keep me. Bob also never minded my ever-changing stylings, as I went from very long hair, to very long hair dyed red and me wearing blue suede shoes, to skinhead with combat boots, although he did say, “What is it with you, Wochner?”)

After moving to Los Angeles, in 1988, I started freelancing for magazines and newspapers, including the Press once again, the Los Angeles Times, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and others.

Throughout all of that, and ever since, as you may have guessed, I have read newspapers. I love newspapers. I love turning the pages, I love the comics and the puzzles and the advice columns, I love reading the letters from infuriated readers, I love admiring the captions and headlines written to fit the space (the Press used to have a weekly contest for best caption and best headline, each prize winning $25; I made it my aim to win those every week possible to supplement my income), and I even love looking at the sports section although I don’t follow sports.

So you can imagine my fury at the Wall Street Journal not delivering my newspaper. Especially given that I was paying for it and it was ungodly expensive and they weren’t delivering it.

As I said, I would complain online in the sanctioned place to do so. I also called them — more than once; more like twice weekly. I even took to reading the masthead, figuring out how email addresses were constructed, and emailing the publisher, a senior editor or two, certainly everyone named in circulation, and I think even someone with the last name of Murdoch.

Nothing worked, and delivery remained intermittent at best, as every day my chest would tighten as I approached the office and wondered if the paper would be there. Finally, I canceled my subscription. Fuck them.

(As an aside: What does the WSJ most frequently bemoan? Poor management. ‘Nuff said!)

In all the years since, the Wall Street Journal has sent me a letter almost weekly begging me to come back. But I wasn’t yet over my upset.

Finally, almost six weeks ago, they emailed me an offer: Would I like just digital access for $4/month?

You know what? I would.

Because many times, they’ve got some piece I want to read, but it’s all blockaded. And $4/month seemed a paltry sum to be able to read those pieces. So, I clicked and, yes, for the first time in more than seven years, I was a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal! It was purely digital, I was only doing it to read pieces that I’d come across that I wanted to click to read, so I didn’t need to get all worked up about a print edition they weren’t delivering, and it was only $4/month. Done!

Then they emailed me and said, pretty much, “Hey! As a digital subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, you’re entitled to our Weekend print edition — free! Do you want it?”

The Weekend print edition, I thought? That’s with their arts section, which I’d always liked — with lots of books reviewed, and pieces about architecture and museums and paintings. Sure! I’d like that! So I clicked on the little “Yes!” button.

And that Saturday, when I walked outside to pick up my freshly delivered Los Angeles Times, there it was like a leprechaun sitting on my lawn: the Wall Street Journal Weekend edition! I picked it up, took it inside, and slowly read my way through it over the next three weeks.

Three weeks because: They didn’t deliver it the next week.

Or the week after.

My wife said, “I thought you were getting the Wall Street Journal Weekend edition now.”

Determined not to gnash my teeth, I simply said, “They’re not delivering it.”

“Why not?” she asked. Knowing me, she was ready for me to swing into action on this.

“Just not,” I said. As calmly as possible, I recounted for her my previous hostage drama with the WSJ.

Having relived it for her, I was determined now to let it go. I had arrived at a place of inner peace. This time I was not paying for the delivery of the Wall Street Journal Weekend edition. I was paying for digital access. They had offered to deliver the Weekend edition for free, and while it may have been their nasty little plan to snub me yet again, I wasn’t falling for it, because I refused to feel anything about it. I was getting what I was paying for — digital access — and their playing gotcha with print delivery was not going to have any effect on me.

And that’s how it stayed. Me, reading bits of the paper here and there online, and setting aside any feelings about the Weekend edition. Pure inner peace, well in control of what I could control, which was myself.

Then, yesterday, I went out to get my L.A. Times — and there was the Wall Street Journal Weekend edition lying next to it.

I brought it inside.

My wife saw it and said, “Oh! There’s your Wall Street Journal! I thought they weren’t delivering that!”

I just looked at her.

Lissen up, Murdochs. I know when I’m being gaslighted.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 21st, 2021 at 11:20 am and is filed under On reading, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.