“Have you signed up for the Springfield News-Leader this semester?”
The 35-year-old man had a stack of sample papers with about 10 clipboards, furiously signing up every student walking by the student center, a nexus point where sidewalks converged on campus. In the fall of 1998, it seemed like every student wanted a local newspaper subscription.
I joined the bandwagon and filled out the paperwork. I paid $10 for the discounted subscription and walked to class. I had already signed up for The Wall Street Journal and Christian Science Monitor, so I might as well get local news.
That was the start of my love affair with local news and newspaper subscription sales. Had I known that the salesman earned over $1,000 that day signing up more than 100 students, I would have dropped out of Southwest Missouri State and begun my eventual career in newspaper kiosk sales.
Ten years later, I was an unemployed college graduate with a degree in journalism. Nobody was hiring in 2008 because of the recession. Even fast-food jobs were swamped with applicants. I was surviving on temp work while writing a weekly political column in the News-Leader for free, hoping it would lead to a paying job.
My then-wife, Jill, bought me a yearly subscription for my birthday from a kiosk sales rep at a nearby Walgreens for the low price of $120 a year. I was buying the newspaper every Tuesday to have a copy of my column so it made sense to have it delivered daily for the same price. She also received a $20 Walgreens gift card.
I noticed a job listing in the classifieds for a kiosk sales position. Turns out, the guy who signed up Jill was terminated for drinking alcohol at the kiosk. I applied and started selling three days later.
At the end of the first week, I felt like a failure. I only sold 30 subscriptions, mostly because I was working locations nobody else wanted. One was in a low-income area. I thought for sure I was going to be terminated for not getting enough sales.
Turns out, getting 30 new starts in a week was actually really good in a small market like Springfield, Mo. By my third week, I broke the record for most starts in a week, selling over 100 new subscriptions. By the end of the year, I wrote the second most orders in the entire sales company, Leading Prospect Group, which was owned by someone from Kent, Wash.
Over the next 15 years, I left LPG, started my own kiosk sales company and moved to Utah and eventually Washington. I’ve sold subscriptions in about half of the United States, working for newspapers big and small. I even signed up then-Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, for The Wall Street Journal at a grocery store in Naples, Fla.
It pains me to see many newspaper chains are now giving up on actively seeking new customers through kiosks at storefronts and event promotions. Before the pandemic, most dailies had a kiosk sales team or someone who sold periodically for the publication.
In 2023, only The Seattle Times (which owns the Yakima Herald-Republic and Walla Walla Union-Bulletin) and Sound Publishing (which includes dailies in Everett, Port Angeles and Aberdeen and a bunch of weekly publications) use kiosk sales reps in Washington.
McClatchy (which owns dailies in Bellingham, Tri-Cities, Tacoma and Olympia) ended sales rep promotions after its 2020 bankruptcy. Gannett (which owns the Kitsap Sun) ended kiosk promotions around 2021. This summer, Lee Enterprises (which owns The Daily News in Longview) stopped doing kiosk sales after switching most of its print publications to three days a week.
With so few jobs available for newspaper kiosk sales reps, a once competitive industry has become a fraternity of mostly single, middle-aged or older male sales reps who travel across the country looking for work.
Like a lot of kiosk sales reps, I did not have a permanent address for most of the last three years. With so many changes in the industry and the pandemic, I didn’t want to sign a long-term lease. I lived in motels and Airbnb locations and had mail sent to my sister in Pasco.
Now that I’m remarried, we decided to settle down and get an apartment in Lynnwood. Thankfully, we get to use our new home about five months out of the year while doing events in the Snohomish County area throughout the summer. The rest of the year, we split our time between Alaska, Hawaii and other parts of Washington.
Every year, this job gets more difficult. Subscription prices increase, even though the number of printed days and content decreases. Older customers die or stop taking the newspaper because they don’t want to wait for it to arrive in the mail and don’t want to learn how to use their online subscription. Younger people don’t understand why they have to pay to read online content.
That’s not even the worst part of our job. We are now being verbally harassed and threatened by far-right extremists at events. Thanks to my military training, I can handle my own if someone wants to get physical. I worry about others, especially my wife, who may not be able to defend themselves from political violence.
My hope is that I can finish out this decade doing kiosk sales. At age 55, I will be old enough to qualify for a low-priced mobile home in a senior park. Otherwise, we will have to move to the Midwest, because Washington homes are too expensive, and take a job in retail.
I’m not writing this seeking sympathy. I chose this career and am making it work the best way possible. My hope is that people will read this and have a better understanding of what it’s like being a newspaper kiosk sales rep.
The post A casualty of newspapers’ decline: Kiosk subscription sales reps first appeared on Latest American News.
The post A casualty of newspapers’ decline: Kiosk subscription sales reps appeared first on Latest American News.