The Sacramento Bee Masters Club Edition Arrives

The Sacramento Bee Masters Club edition came out today, but I know this primarily because I belong to that old fart’s group of individuals who still pick up the newspaper off the front porch. Our Sac Bee home subscriber numbers are dwindling, and it’s kind of sad to me to see an old institution like our daily newspaper in print slowly lose its life.

Crap, it was sad for me to see Ladies’ Home Journal bite the dust for home subscribers, and I would never read that magazine even if I was bored to tears at my doctor’s office reception, sitting there without cellphone reception. Watching time-honored institutions die is like watching little bits of my flesh get chipped away by the hammer and chisel of technology.

Print has its purpose. One of the problems with looking at the Sacramento Bee Masters Club edition online instead of holding the paper in your hands is you can’t draw devil horns on those grinning agents with the eye teeth exposed. You can’t put a mustache on that blonde grandma baring cleavage or draw horned-rimmed glasses on Mr. Surfer Dude. Who wants to look at photographs of a bunch of real estate agents in Sacramento online? I mean, outside of the ad department of the Sacramento Bee. Which didn’t do such a hot job with my online photo which, for some reason, is different from the print version.

All of the Sacramento region print publications have this racket going on with real estate agents and Masters Club. Let’s see, they ponder, who can we hit up for advertising dollars and make all of them pay for a wonderful opportunity? Because if an agent is in Masters Club and her photo isn’t there, the public will think she is not a member, so we’ve got ’em all by the balls, um, lady parts. You don’t get your photograph in any Masters Club edition of any newspaper or magazine unless you pay for that privilege. This is not a charity nor public service.

The Sacramento Bee “supports” Masters Club because agents pay the Sacramento Bee to do so.

Who’s got the money? It’s always who’s got the money. The people with the money are Sacramento real estate agents who sell at least 8 homes a year at $3.5 mil, say the advertising departments, and so they run after real estate agents and thrust their grubby little paws into agent pockets. I pay for most publications except for one that nobody else reads. Soon, though, this nonsense can stop. When the newspapers stop printing all together and the magazines shrivel up and die.

And that will be a time of sorrow.

So, even though I yipe about it, I pay for Masters Club print editions year after year.