Relevance from The Ville Voice blog. I keep seeing 13th Street in New Albany.
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Anti-Littering Ordinance Targets C-J, by Rick Redding (on Metro Council).
Councilman Brent Ackerson is introducing an ordinance tonight, along with eight co-sponsors, that is likely to fly through the Public Safety Committee and come up for a full vote next month. It’s an anti-littering ordinance, but it really targets the Courier-Journal.
“My staff has gotten more calls on this issue that for any other subject, including storm debris, since I took office,” said Ackerson, whose District 26 encompasses St. Matthews.
Here’s what it’s all about. The newspaper produces a weekly advertising circular that is delivered only to non-subscribers. It requires its carriers to deliver these flyers to each address that doesn’t receive a newspaper. You can call and request to be taken off the list, but most people don’t, sort of like the no-call telemarketers’ list.
The C-J, of course, promises advertisers distribution throughout the county. It’s no doubt part of the reason Arnold Garson keeps bragging about the paper reaching 85 percent of local residents. Maybe not. But the point is that the carriers typically toss the flyers on driveways, in yards or on sidewalks. And it really falls under the definition of littering. When residents don’t fetch them, they end up piling up.
Most newspaper carriers make their deliveries by car, and with so many customers dropping the service, there are longer stretches of neighborhoods with no subscribers.
And a lot of the flyers end up in dumpsters, undelivered. Or storm drains or ditches. This is something the C-J doesn’t tell its advertisers.
The new ordinance doesn’t outlaw the flyers. It does require that they be delivered to front porches, and not tossed out the windows of delivery vehicles.
Other sponsors include Council members Jon Ackerson, King, Henderson, Butler, Welch, Blackwell, Peden and Flood.
If it passes, the C-J will have to make some serious changes in its system of delivery.
Way to go Mr. Ackerson. About a year ago the ESNA voted to call and request that the CJ stop littering these papers throughout our neighborhood association as most people just left them in the yards and on the sidewalk to rot. It took over 4 months, 4 different people and around 40 calls before the littering was stopped. For 2 weeks. Then it started again.
ReplyDeleteI have been calling and requesting they stop intermittently ever since then. We sent out an email for people to respond back with their addresses and we would even give them a specific list of houses to stop throwing the stuff at!
Earlier this week, a C-J ad rep was in the store touting their total market coverage.
ReplyDeleteI explained to him that what he was asking me to pay for was littering my own community. Further, I explained that if I ever had anything to do with it, the C-J would be prosecuted for littering. One hopes he had the fortitude to tell his bosses that he lost at least one sale because of what they call distribution, what we call litter.