THE Cub Report, 03.17.2014, Version- Me & Ma Bell

A few days ago when getting home from a long trip, I noticed something on my front doorstep. I noticed it was a big plastic bag, and I was hoping it was not was not what I suspected it to be. I stopped my car and hopped out to investigate, and sure enough it turned out to be what I suspected, more dreaded phone books. This time not just one, not two, but three of them, and I was pissed off.

Why would I be pissed off about getting phone books? Because… they are an enormous waste of resources. All I have ever done with phone books since the late 90s is throw them away. I can’t even remember the last time I actually cracked one open (how about you???), yet they cost some serious bank to design, print, and ship to my house. Wow, imagine what could be accomplished if all the resources that were saved from printing phone books were put to good use like fighting cancer/hunger/etc…

So… why do phone books still exist? Oh, you already know the answer, but in case it has slipped your mind- to sell advertising. All those trees are destroyed and all those fossil fuels are used, just so some schmuck can sell advertising that nobody EVER SEES. It’s one thing if the advertising actually does some good, but when it isn’t, that’s what makes it such a waste.

Which brings to me my point here, phone books are much like todays dinosaur media/magazines (and not just rc mags, but all mags). Their readership is crap, yet they still exist. How? You guessed it, because their slick salespeople can still talk money out of advertisers. It seems like some mags do not care if all those glossy pages are never seen by human eyeballs before being crushed in a trash compactor, what really matters to them is how many ads the sales department can pump out each month.

I’ve got no issue with mags that exist to actually be seen by real life readers (an example being RRCi, which is obviously a labor of love with loads of original content and very little advertising), but I’ve got a HUGE problem with mags that are a waste, those only printed to provide numbers for selling advertising, those that are the phone books of the mag world…

That’s it for this week ya bunch of lunatics, support your local hobby shops and bash spots when ya can.

YOUR Cub Reporter