If you like a little news with your morning coffee, prepare to part with a little more money. The Miami Herald Media Company quietly raised prices for the Herald Monday by 43 percent in some areas, blaming increased costs and decreasing ad revenue.
The Herald had been selling for 35 cents a copy in Miami-Dade county and 25 cents a copy in Broward County, but with Monday's editions the price was increased to 50 cents a copy in both counties. That's an increase of almost 43 percent in Miami-Dade and Broward; prices in Monroe County had already been raised to 50 cents a copy last year.
The Sunday Herald will increase in price from $1 to $1.25, a 25% increase.
Herald spokesperson Dory Robau blamed the increase, the newspaper's first price hike in Miami-Dade county in 18 years, on increased costs. It comes when at a difficult time, when like most newspapers The Herald is struggling to keep subscribers from defecting to other news outlets like the internet. In March of 2008, the Audit Bureau of Circulation
reported The Herald had seen an 11% drop in circulation, down to 240 thousand daily copies. Recent news reports have placed estimated circulation even lower.
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6 comments:
How many papers are discounted to the hotels, and counted in that total? During my last stay, I noticed that the newspapers that had been delivered to each door, were in the housekeeping trash bag still in their wrappers. In the morning, I open my computer for my news, I don’t even watch TV. In my experience, serious business people don’t rely on the print media, their news is a day old, and as we now know, not trustworthy.
Funny you point that out. Me too. It was newspapers that weaned me from them with their bias, sour milk reporting.
Now, I read the Journal on-line before sleep, and then catch the news on-line with the morning coffee.
And until my paper journal subscription shortly runs out, it stays in the driveway till later in the day.
At dinner, why in the world would I want to hear 30-60 minutes of stale, bias and poorly spun news I heard almost 12 hours earlier?
Sometimes, and this is one of them, It does seem a bit sad, watching them take their last breaths.
Raising prices because they have too, and adjusting for a lack of buyers isn’t’ fun. Though it reminds me of the way some third-world countries do things, I suspect if I was in their shoes I would do the same.
I could ask what took them so long to raise their prices, but at this stage of the game it’s not relevant.
As alluded to stated above posts, your ex-readers habits changed. And McClatchy and the lot are absolutely to blame.
Many years ago, pre-internet, I asked myself why I was paying a newspaper to insult me, while trying to get my news.
Now after much work, finding the right mix of blogs, RSS feeders, and web sites, I have my news back, and in the form I want.
So to think of “going back” , only bags the question, going back to what? There is no going back.
I'm surprised it took so long for Miami to go to 50 cents. I work for a dead tree media outlet and we've all gone to 75 cents daily. And, USA Today is a dollar. So, if you wanted a paper, to spend a quarter is a deal. 50 cents still isn't bad.
There were so many free newspapers littering our yards, that we now have an ordinance that nothing can be thrown in your yard without a subscription.
People on commuter trains that try to open those big broadsheets are annoying. They make crinkle and crack sounds, and elbow you. What dinosaurs they are.
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