The New York Times, which did a front page profile of the Payphone Project on May 13, 2004, today has a more perfunctory piece on the demise of the payphone.
“The bottom line,” [Verizon spokesperson Jim] Smith added, “is that pay phones are struggling
to generate revenue, and are no longer profitable, so out they go.”
The real story is stuffed at the end:
“‘But what about older people who have never used cellphones, or poor people who can’t afford them, or people who just don’t want one?'”
This article also includes no mention of the free phones around the city, which offer free (ad supported) calling time within the U.S.
The title of the story, incidentally, references the fact that the Superman comic book character snuck into phone booths to turn from Clark Kent to Superman. Phone booths are not mentioned in this story, but in New York City there are 4 remaining outdoor, freestanding phone booths, all of them on West End Avenue in Manhattan.
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