Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Fort Worth readers surprised to see Thanksgiving price hike at the Star-Telegram

Dan McGraw says some Startlegram customers were caught off guard last week when they discovered the price of the Thanksgiving day newspaper had been raised to $2 a copy. And some of them probably felt ripped off when they realized they were paying the extra money for the privilege of seeing more ads.

Many of us were sort of surprised on Thanksgiving when we went to buy our morning Fort Worth Star-Telegram. They recently raised prices for the weekday edition to $1, and some of us were getting used to that. But the Thursday paper was $2, the same as the Sunday edition.

Looks like newspapers around the country were doing that as well. Columnist Peter Funt chides the newspaper industry for these holiday price increases in this
column. And the reasoning newspapers gave for the price increase? The holiday paper had more ad inserts than a normal weekday, so they thought you should pay double the price for that esteemed right to look at Wal-Mart and Target ads.

So this is what the newspaper game has become. Give less editorial content, charge more, and get a little more money by claiming readers should pay extra to look at ads. I sort of thought it was the other way around.

Hat tip: email

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cut them some slack.

They were merely trying their best to quickly pay back the 77 Million they let themselves and their pensioners be defrauded out of, before having to disclose to their retiree’s their financial ineptness.

Anonymous said...

Jacking up the price for more ads is a recipe for disaster. That's like a cable company charging more for more commercials.

Anonymous said...

The Star-Telegram sucks. All you get is Dallas Morning News sports and photos, might as well get the Dallas paper.

Anonymous said...

Fresno has done this for a couple of years.

Anonymous said...

Let's grab a few bucks while we can. Who cares if we piss off a few subscribers? They won't be around long anyway.