Does Dirt from Fenway=A year subscription to the WSJ?

I recently redeemed some leftover frequent flier miles for a year long print subscription to the Wall Street Journal. This cost me about 2,800 points. So, some immediate reactions and a suggestion to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

This is a GREAT deal.  The Newsstand price would have a value of at least a couple hundred dollars. If you were to go online today and order a year-long print subscription to the WSJ, it would cost you $110.

So, for  2,800 airline miles you are getting a year full of great WSJ content ($110) for a value of about .04 per mile. Let’s compare that to some other things you can get for roughly the same amount of miles…

A $25 GAP gift card from American Express’s Membership Rewards= 2500 points or  .01 per mile
A $17 bottle of Oreck Pet Stain Remover = 2400 points or .007 cents per mile
Dirt from Fenway Park (home of the Boston Red Sox) =  2400 points or .007 cents per mile

Now, we can have fun answering the following questions…

• Isn’t DIRT from Fenway Park worth more than a bottle of Pet Cleaner? (Yankees/Red Sox fans will have fun with this one)
• A 4 year subscription to the WSJ is worth 100 bucks at the Gap.
• And my personal favorite , some dirt from Fenway Park is less valuable than a year long subscription to the WSJ..

And, ask ourselves the following questions….

How do we value the offline (print only) edition of the Wall Street Journal? And for that matter, the value of any other newspaper/publication struggling with their business model now?

And my favorite question
The Mags for Miles program currently only allows print subscriptions to the WSJ and select magazines. With the WSJ and now the NYT soon charging for online content, why isn’t an online subscription available? It’s a terrific opportunity to engage a new audience and use us some of those leftover points…