Fax on demand
No bad ideas people, keep them coming, just put them out there.
Folks, I’ve been considering some changes to the newsletter. What do you think of this idea?
Each day, instead of sending you an email with the full text of the newsletter, what if I sent you a one-page fax, instead?
The fax would include a list of headlines and brief story summaries. You'd read down the list, mark the ones that interested you most, and fax it back to me.
Then, I'd send you a longer fax including the full text of the stories you chose.
It would all be for a pretty reasonable price. Maybe a flat $10 a month for the first fax, and then $1 for each story?
OK, maybe not. (But there are no bad ideas, people! Keep them coming, put them out there!)
As you might have gathered, this concept was once apparently cutting edge, as outlined in a 33-year-old article that ran in the New York Times on July 6, 1992: Papers Finding New Ways to Make Faxes a Business.
That happens to have been the very first day I started my first post-college job at a newspaper.
Salary: $18,500 a year. I remember thinking there was no way I could possibly spend all that money.
It’s funny, I’ve shared this anecdote from different perspectives before, but this is the first time that it just seems flat-out old to me—like someone talking about how they started work at the telegraph company on the same day Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
They tried it at The Fresno Bee newspaper, and it worked to some degree. People were willing to pay 99 cents to have baseball box scores faxed to them in the morning.
"It's for the ‘I-want-it-now’ guy," said the guy behind the service, who was working really hard to make fax-on-demand the wave of the future.
Anyway, it's so perfectly anchored in the way the world worked when I was an early 20-something just setting out that I can't help looking back at it.
Call me the “‘I want-it-now’ guy.”
See you tomorrow. Don’t forget to update your fax number.
7 other things worth knowing today
The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a judge's decision to block the removal of men alleged to be members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador without any legal process under the Alien Enemies Act. The ruling, in which the justices were divided 5-4 in part, means the Trump administration can try to resume deportations under the rarely used wartime law, so long as detainees are given due process. (NBC News)
The stock market finished down Monday as investors continued to fret over Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs plan - the markets swung widely on a fake report about the president considering a delay to his ambitions. The market gained — then lost — $2.4 trillion in a matter of minutes, as an apparently baseless report that Trump was considering pausing tariffs on all countries except China spread across social media. (The Independent)
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke is changing his company’s approach to hiring in the age of artificial intelligence. Employees will be expected to prove why they “cannot get what they want done using AI” before asking for more headcount and resources, Lutke wrote in a memo to staffers that he posted to X on Monday. (CNBC)
Houston played Florida for the NCAA men's college basketball championship last night. If you're reading this, it's because I still wasn't feeling well and couldn't stay up to watch the end of the game. But, the result will be at this link. (ESPN)
Do you like parades? A White House official says the Trump administration is planning a 4-mile long military parade through Washington D.C. on June 14, to commemorate both the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, which also happens to be Trump’s 79th birthday. Trump canceled plans for a similar parade in 2018 after costs soared to $92 million. (Axios)
A species of wolf that died out some 12,500 years ago lives again as the “world’s first successfully de-extincted animal,” according to Dallas-based biotech company Colossal Biosciences. The company claims to have created three dire wolf pups by using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the genes of a gray wolf, the prehistoric dire wolf’s closest living relative. The result is essentially a hybrid species similar in appearance to its extinct forerunner. (CNN)
Italy suddenly and drastically tightened its laws on citizenship by descent at the end of last month. Until recently, it was possible for people around the world who could point to at least one Italian great-grandparent to become citizens, but the government cited concerns that people with tenuous ties to the country have been taking advantage of the process to reap the benefits of an EU passport. (The Washington Post)
Thanks for reading. Photo by Piotr Chrobot on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments!
Laugh if you want, but you do realize faxes are far from dying - they are the backbone of the way patient and other medical information is exchanged in the medical industry
This article makes me think about the Christmas gift I got my son one year - a week long ice climbing trip in Colorado- his long wanted adventure came & he loved it but when I asked what the most memorable part of the trip was he replied it was getting off the major airlines airplane and getting in a much smaller plane and having to walk up the stairs to enter the plane. “I’ve always wanted to do that!” I was dumbfounded I grew up entering all planes that way - to him it was not outdated much a much cooler & desired experience! How we all look at things so differently never ceases to amaze me!