Newsweek covers

[Solecismic]

A couple of weeks ago, Newsweek ran a cover story on gay marriage. We subscribe, and the day before Newsweek arrived, my wife went to the grocery store and saw there were two different covers. One with a male couple and one with a female couple.

She wondered which we would receive. I looked at the mailing label from the previous issue, and guessed we'd receive the female couple version because my name is on the subscription.

Sure enough, we received the version with the two (fairly hot) women on the cover.

I was wondering, for those of you who also subscribe to Newsweek, if you received the opposite-sex-of-subscriber version?

By the way, when the mail arrived that day, I was standing in the driveway talking to a technician who was starting our annual furnace cleaning. Never joke with a furnace technician. I said, "look at those two, they sure make gay marriage look appealing..." Poor guy stayed far away the rest of the afternoon.

[QuikSand]

Our scrip is in Mrs. Q's name, and we got the two men.

Differential covers have been used as a ploy for a long time - my strong inclination is that the distribution is purely random. How much would it cost to come up with a programmed scheme? And to what end?

Might be intriguing to see which of the two covers sold better over the counter, where people have a choice. (Gotta think the two women... much more of a "crowd pleaser")

[Solecismic]

My guess is they want to minimize potential offense. The aggrieved reader comment in the most recent letters section was a woman who had received the male cover.

How hard would it be? Programmatically, simple. All they'd have to do is sort the subscriber list on common first names, randomly place those with initials or where it's uncertain, and print one sex first, then replace it with the other once they've run through the sorted number of names. After years of staring at numbers, I've come to believe that the sort feature is the best thing in Excel.

[CamEdwards]

So the next game is going to be Front Office Threesome?

kick ass!

[QuikSand]

Let's say there is some vast Washpost conspiracy to send the gender-appropriate cover to everyone on the list.

Interesting thought: if that became confirmed, would there be a PC-police crackdown?