I was surprised to see a fancy new Toronto Sun newspaper box with a gizmo for accepting credit cards to purchase the paper - somebody is working hard to get that 50 cents from the news reading public.
The high tech box was located right outside of Union Station and the first thing that caught my eye was the unusual look of the sleek machine - instead of the traditional red box. Looking closer I discovered that it accepted credit cards.
Now I myself have been reading paid newspapers less and less while going online more and more. One of the reasons that I stopped buying the Sun was that when you bought it at the store you had to pay 53 cents instead of 50 cents. If you tried to buy the paper out of the box a good percentage of the time the coin operation failed and it either kept my money or gave me back my change and wouldn't let me get a paper - both of these options made me less than happy. UPDATE: I went to a SUN box yesterday to finally buy a paper and of course it would not work - and I tried a few times.
Now that the business model of newspapers seems to be failing the old way of doing things has been replaced with less news, less newspaper and increased costs to cover the loss of advertising revenue. To continue selling less and less of their newspapers they may have to substantially raise the cost of each paper - no wonder they need the ability to take credit cards.
