Ray Sawhill

I was baffled when the following envelope arrived from The Kiplinger Letter:

Why? Because, although the envelope's pitch was talking to me as though I needed to renew, I'd never in fact never been a subscriber. So on what basis was it screaming at me that my last issue had arrived? And what was it hoping to accomplish?

The answer was revealed in the packet's contents:

In other words, if I've got this right, what the Kiplinger Letter's packet was saying to me was: Subscribe now, or we'll stop sending you free issues.

Conditions in the media business must be even more awful than I thought they were.