"Hide your information! The big government and the big businesses are coming for your data!" Robert…read moreEllis Smith probably fantasizes himself as the modern day Paul Revere, warning every American from door to door about how our privacy is regularly invaded by our government, health care and financial services, and tech companies. Too bad he will never achieve Paul Revere's legacy.
As the name suggested, Privacy Journal is a monthly newsletter that publishes 2-3 original articles about privacy invasions, littered with short paragraphs of privacy-related news. However, the newsletters as a whole are poor quality and over priced. PJ charges $125/year subscription fee for 12 monthly issues, and each issue is only 8-pages long. Essentially I am paying for $10 per newsletter (8 pages). This pricing scheme is mind-blowing considering the fact that I only pay NYTimes $15/month for full access to its digital content on my computer and my smartphone, which is more resourceful and has higher quality content, not to mention the beautiful visualizations and photographs that I can find on NYTimes.com. In comparison, each PJ issue feels like a high school newsletter when I hold it in my hands, and the "original" articles are only about 1000 words each, so I can finish reading the entire newsletter in a single afternoon and then stash it away somewhere. Even PJ's website looks like it's stuck in the early 2000's, and I gave up browsing its web content a long time ago.
When I first subscribed to PJ because my neighbor encouraged me to support a local small business, I was offered the option to receive the printed newsletter by mail or digitally in pdf form by email (it's an either/or option, you can't choose both). I soon learned that the digital version was basically the same as the analog version, and I was disappointed by the lack of interactive content that I often find on NYTimes.com or other news websites. I also realized that the publisher was pushing for subscribers to choose the digital option to save his printing cost. This wouldn't be a big deal if PJ offers some additional content that other print media companies do (eg. WaPost, Time.com, Bloomberg Business Week), but it doesn't (probably because the publisher cannot afford to). The newsletters are also irregularly delivered every month, as they would arrive by email anytime between the 5th and the 16th of the month. There were at least a couple of times when I received them mid-month, then I wondered to myself "Wait, I still subscribe to Privacy Journal?"
Aside from the pricing and the delivery issues, I also have peeves about the actual articles that PJ publish. To be honest, because they are so short (again, they are 800-1000 words long), they don't often go in depth in their discussions about the issues that were brought up. By contrast, I usually find more informative discussions from other news resources, magazines at the Blue State Cafe (eg. WIRED), or even free blogs written by legal or tech experts. PJ articles, especially those written by the publisher himself, some times carry a political tone that is more fear mongering than educational, perhaps with the goal to drive consumers away from modern day electronic services. Seriously, the newsletters create an impression that the government and businesses are always collecting and utilizing our personal information involuntarily and we are not safe unless we hide under a rock. Naturally, I do not agree with PJ's premise because I do not feel my personal well being is compromised when I adopt Google services or engage with people on social media.
In sum, Privacy Journal provides a niche product for the niche consumers who are fanatic about privacy. Sadly, I do not believe I was getting my money worth from the content that I paid for. I definitely encourage everyone to consider subscriptions to alternative newspapers or magazines if they want to be educated about privacy issues.
