Jim Dwyer gets an entire New York Times column out of condemning Nike for slashing sneakers and clothing and trashing it rather than donating it, un-damaged, to the poor. He writes:
every single shoe had been slashed. That was precisely how H&M disposed of its garments — rendered unwearable with blades and big hole punchers...
Many retailers will destroy garments that cannot be sold in order to prevent expensive brand-name products from entering society at low or no cost. Some companies simply do not want their products — or even knockoffs of their goods — to be worn by people who are obviously unable to afford them.
What stunned me about this column was the hypocrisy of it, and the apparent lack of awareness of the hypocrisy of it. The Times, after all, is stuck with thousands — maybe even tens of thousands — of copies at the end of each day of unsold newsstand copies. The system for being reimbursed for these "returns," as they are known in the industry, generally requires the newsstand operators to rip off the front page of the newspaper, or the top of it, using a "blade" just like the one that Mr. Dwyer is so bent out of shape about when it comes to the sneakers.
Where's the column condemning the New York Times company for not distributing its unused newspapers for free the next day to homeless shelters, or for not putting them on sale the next day at a discounted price like so many day-old doughnuts?
A Times critic might say the newspaper is barely worth any money on the day it is published, let alone once the news is old. But I actually find that plenty of Times content — whether it is the food or science and health section, or the book review, or the magazine — ages pretty well. There might be an audience that finds it useful. By pulping day-old newspapers rather than distributing them to "society at low or no cost," the Times itself sure looks like it's engaging in the same practice as Nike and H&M — or at least something similar enough that the columnist should devote a sentence or two to explaining why Nike's practice and H&M's deserve condemnation, while the Times practice deserves to be ignored. Otherwise, it looks like a double standard, a case of the Times holding companies it covers to a higher standard than it follows in its own business practices.