The newspaper industry is in serious trouble, but you wouldn't know it from visiting some Los Angeles newsstands the day after President Barack Obama's inauguration.
Daily editions were selling out fast Wednesday morning, some despite ridiculous markups in price.
One newsstand, at the corner of Santa Monica and Beverly Glen boulevards, sold all its copies of The Washington Post by 8 a.m., despite being priced at $10 a piece (note the $2 price printed in the upper right corner of A-1).
A mile away, at a newsstand on Westwood Boulevard, beside the beloved Junior's deli, the clerk offered to sell his last copy of the Washington Post for $15.
Fifteen dollars?
Don't expect The Washington Post to see a penny of the difference.
A wire story circulated by The Associated Press chronicled similar behavior in Chicago, where hawkers shouting "extra, extra" returned to street corners for the first time in years.
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A Pico Boulevard newsstand near Overland Avenue had people lining up to buy copies of the Los Angeles Times, LA Opinion, the New York Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. At a curbside stand on Santa Monica Boulevard drivers weren't even bothering to get out of their cars, but waving money out the windows and beckoning to the clerk.
-- TJ Sullivan
