At my local drug store this morning, two people were in line to buy special editions of the Detroit Free Press, commemorating Barack Obama's election. One had come from a nearby grocery store, which was already out of them. Alas, he and the other customer were out of luck. Rite-Aid's supply was gone, too.
Yesterday, the News and Free Press had printed an extra 30,000 copies of their regular editions, the ones actually bringing the news of Obama's election. Those didn't last too long, either.
And what's happening in Detroit has been happening all over the country. Via Romenesko:
The Chicago Tribune and New York Times are printing 50,000 more newspapers, while the Washington Post is printing 250,000 copies of a commemorative edition of today's paper. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had to move its single-copy sales operation outside after a newspaper-hungry crowd filled the lobby.
In San Francisco, a store owner reported that several customers came in to buy copies of the New York Times because their home delivery copies had been stolen. The Times is now making copies available via its online store, although the site is slow due to heavy traffic.
--Jonathan Cohn