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The 5 Best Parts Of The NY Post's In-Depth Investigation Into Subway's Footlong Subs
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jan 17, 2013
Modified Jan 17, 2013
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Jan 17, 2013
Modified Jan 17, 2013
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This week, an Australian man demanded answers from Subway after he posted a photo of a Footlong sub on Facebook that showed it was only 11 inches long. Matt Corby's daring questions sparked a revolution, as people began inundating Subway's Facebook page with photos of pathetically meager sandwiches. And thus, the NY Post launched the most important investigation of our time...probably after seeing the story in Early Addition yesterday. Below, we picked out our five favorite moments from their front-page tale of deceit, greed, and grease.
They deserve a knuckle sandwich. They start things off right with a classic NY Post lede—classic in that it is both a pun AND a promise of violence. Hopefully they can find more ways to enrage their readers over this inconsequential topic.
Four out of seven Footlongs—purchased at Subway locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens—measured only 11 or 11.5 inches, according to the test. Here's the meat of their story: interns were sent to seven of the 168 NYC-area Subway locations for this "test"...and their results from this teeny sampling are far from convincing. Our own scientific mathification of their data showed that their seven subs average out to 11.6" each, which means they're really splitting hairs here. And that is giving them the benefit of the doubt about their measuring methods: who even knows if they measured from the base of the sandwich!
“They’re cheating us!” said 32-year-old Juan Rivera, who runs a hardware shop in Brooklyn Heights. He eats Subway every other day with his father—but now he feels betrayed. “That’s foul and misleading. They state it’s a foot long, so it should be a foot long!” There it is: the outrage is starting to boil over. Let's all keep in mind that the "Footlong" name is a trademark of Subway, and a trademark IS a promise, and a broken promise deserves nothing less than a broken face from a knuckle sandwich. Sure, eating Subway every other day doesn't sound very healthy or tasty to us, but family traditions are family traditions, regardless of taste buds or clogged arteries. This does remind us: has anyone investigated ballpark footlongs yet? Oh, that's right—nobody cares.
And those extra few bites can really add up. If you buy a $7 “footlong” every other day for a year, an axed extra inch adds up to a loss of roughly $100. More outrage: you are being shanked by the hand of the free market, people who eat Subway an inordinate amount of time! Since you're already risking costly health problems in the future, the least they could do is give you your money's worth to begin with. The perfect solution: a knuckle sandwich.
Some defended the “shrinkage,” saying toasted subs come out shorter — but The Post’s analysis didn’t bear that out. Seinfeld reference? Check. Questionable science on bread? Check. Calling a glorified survey an "analysis"? Check plus.
We can't wait for the Andrea Peyser column on this scandal.
Tagged
footlong
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investigation
journalismism
ny post
rip off
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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