The news just gets grimmer and grimmer here in buggy whip land:
The New York Times Co. will increase the Monday-Saturday newsstand cost of its flagship paper by 25 cents to $1.50, the publisher said Wednesday.
Times Chief Executive Janet Robinson said the price increase for The New York Times will take effect Aug. 18. The company has already raised home delivery prices for the paper 4.5 percent in two separate hikes since last July. That helped overall circulation revenue rise 2.5 percent in the latest quarter.
Your product is losing money by the truckloads. Fewer and fewer people are buying it, and you keep laying off staff so you are giving the remaining readers less and less. So you raise the price. I'm not an expert in this area, but that does not seem like the best business model I ever heard of.
Comments
I can hear the bowl "swirling".
It already costs more to print and deliver an extra copy of the newspaper than most newspapers charge for the subscription. Selling subscriptions below cost isn't a good business model, either.
Part of the problem is that they're delivering newspapers 13 times a week. That's awfully expensive.
They're also using large parts of the newspaper for crap. How many people buy the newspaper for recipes?
Publish a regional newspaper on Sunday, with grocery ads and other chain advertising in it. Publish local newspapers on Wednesday, each one covering one school district, with local sports and advertising from mom-and-pop businesses. You'd lose no more 20% of the advertising that a 7-day daily would get, and cut your costs at least 40%.
That's not what anyone in the business wants to hear, and I can't guarantee that it will work - but publishing a 6-day or a 7-day newspaper definitely is not going to work.
Maybe the paper could get back to adding QUALITY back into it's pages, instead of tripe?
(how novel in concept)
I hope they wiped before flushing (NY)...(pun intended).
B.G.