“The Old Man and the Sea” has 26,560 words. “Animal Farm” has 29,060; “The Call of the Wild” has 37,058; “The Great Gatsby” has 47,094; “Profiles in Courage” has 62,400; and the May 3, 2009, Wichita Eagle has 80,156, not counting advertising.*
Eighty. Thousand. Words.
Eighty thousand words about your city, nation and world in addition to sports, business, entertainment and commentary. All of it brought to you by people who live down your block, go to your church and shop at your stores.
On top of that, there are photos by prize-winning photographers, Parade magazine, comics and circulars that tell you what’s hot and, more importantly for many, what’s on sale.
Looking for a job or want to buy a car or a boat? Found a dog, lost a dog or want to adopt a dog? Going house hunting or mapping out your garage-sale route? There are hundreds of classified ads you can dig through.
Oh yeah, there’s also $318 worth of coupons.**
So . . . every Sunday you can read “The Old Man and the Sea” three times in a row and not save any money, or you can increase your knowledge, be entertained and potentially save hundreds of dollars.
All for only $2 — less if you have The Eagle delivered to your home.
Who says there aren’t bargains in the world?
* I chose May 3 because that’s when I started this project. It’s been six weeks, but man, that was a lot of counting. Also, numbers were counted as words. e.g. “The koala’s rampage sent 73 people to the hospital on April 14” would count as 12 words.
** This amount varies each week. But you’re smart, you knew that already.
3 Comments
Congratulations on Roehrman’s national recognition for headline writing. I like the full page ads that have been running on newspaper viability. It states that while print advertising revenue is down around 15%, readership is down only by 3%. And that the on line revenue and readership is up dramatically.
I am surprised at the number of people who comment to me on Eagle only stories.
I LOVE The Wichita Eagle – I am addicted to it – so much so that when I go on vacation, I *TRY* to find
a newspaper. In addition, I have my daily subscription newspapers saved for me when I am away
so I don’t miss anything – as long as I have time to
at least scan them once returning home.
Keep up the GREAT work!
That’s great information… but I have to comment on something… how many words are available on any given news WEBSITE, including the Eagle. Don’t get me wrong, I get my news from Kansas.com every day. I just fail to see the value of the newspaper these days. Its a dying media. I noted the Eagle’s desperate attempt to convince the city that everything is fine (full page ad with a picture of the Eagle’s dwindling staff and a letter from the publisher) in Sunday’s paper. Yes, the Eagle still publishes a lot of words, but do they have any impact and does anyone really pay attention. What makes the Eagle special??? Why not just hit the online sources?