Newsland, a magazine-shop staple of the University area for the past 30 years, closed July 17 to the despair of owner Roger Walsh’s customers.
“I’ve come to tears with customers saying goodbye,” he said.
“Emotional.”
Walsh predicts that magazines won’t be around after five years — it’ll all be on the Internet, and print might be available as subscription only.
“Fifty percent of what they ship me gets thrown away,” he said.
“You have the cost of the shipping. I used to do $500,000 a year, gross. Last year I did $248,000. And in May, I was $25,000 below that already by the first five months. So, do I use my savings to keep it open? No.”
It’s not just small businesses closing down. Borders, the nation’s second-largest bookstore chain, announced it will soon be closing all of its stores. Walsh doesn’t see signs of print making a comeback nor the economy improving.
“I am totally disgusted with our Congress and House not dealing with this issue, fighting like preschool children, voting the party line instead of helping Americans,” he said. “They suck.”
Many people would be quick to agree with Walsh that the Internet is destroying their former way of life.
But Carson Stradford is more optimistic. She works next door at the Mint Tulip and said magazines will probably still be around in 10 years.
“They will be published by people who can afford to not make money, like people with trust funds,” she said. “And the magazines will just be about whatever they want them to be about, and they’ll last for less than one year at a time.”
A customer said that if Walsh didn’t sell a certain magazine, it was probably because they don’t print it, but he was always willing to order something for a customer if he didn’t carry it.
Former Newsland employee Daniel Rhinier, who now lives in Philadelphia, was taken aback by the news.
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“Oh, man, that’s a bummer,” he said. “That’s a serious bummer.
That means I can’t get a job when I move to back to Albuquerque.”
Newsland stocked magazines for music, art, psychology, religion, travel, auto, sports, surfing, science, technology, gaming, news, cultural criticism and porn.
“The funny people are the ones who come in, look at the porn first, and go around the rest of the store leisurely,” Rhinier said. “They look at the other magazines, but they’re not really looking at them. And then they go back to the porn, like I care. I’m like, ‘Do your thing dude. I don’t really care.’”
Walsh said if he was making enough money he would keep the store open.
“How many customers do I have? One,” he said in the nearly empty store. “And it’s a newspaper. You know what I make on newspapers? A dime. In the hayday, I used to remember counting 62 people in here. It’s like you can do anything from home. You don’t even know your neighbors anymore.”
Walsh suggested that no political leaders should be paid until they fix the national debt, and that inflation will rise so much that the U.S. won’t even be able to print its money.
“Obama is not a leader — he’s a f**king chicken,” Walsh said. “It has nothing to do with the party; he’s just not a leader. He is not taking on the problems that Americans have. They’re clueless where we are all at. They can approve pay raises while the country goes broke. They’re more concerned over what Republicans or Democrats think or do than the welfare of Americans.”
This coming from a man who voted for Obama.
“It used to be people were attuned to giving local businesses their business,” Walsh said. “I try not to go to Walmart. I try not to go to Costco. I try to give it to someone who is making a wage locally and an employer that treats his employees well.”
