Newsroom employees asked to sell subscriptions

Denver Post employees received a flier on April 4 asking them to sell newspaper subscriptions for either the Post or the Rocky Mountain News. For their effort, they would be eligible to receive either $25 in cash or and iPod Shuffle.
The Denver Westword detailed how staffers reacted to the request in a recent article.

Post business columnist Al Lewis makes sport of the deal in an amusing blog entry on the Post website (it's the second item). "I don't just write the newspaper. Now I sell it," he declares, adding that, "like most Americans, I will do ANYTHING for an iPod."

But others at the paper took the admonition more seriously, including business reporter Elizabeth Aguilera, who sent out an e-mail about the contest to a wide range of folks on her contact list -- not just friends, but also people she met while working her previous beat, urban affairs. "I don't think this is the first time" the paper has tried such a tack, Aguilera says. "It's just the first time I've paid attention."

For Aguilera, the Shuffle isn't much of an incentive; if she earns one, she plans to give it to her eleven-year-old niece. As her e-mail makes clear, she decided to take part out of a commitment to help the paper during an especially difficult period. According to her, "We've all been talking about how the media industry is changing and we all need to grow with it, whether it's podcasting or blogging or maybe doing something like this."