The price of the D&C rises.
Well, the cost of a paper has just gone up to .75 cents from .50. That is a 50% increase. I don’t know about the subscription rates but believe they are constant.
The Democrat and Chronicle is no longer 50 cents. It is now 75 cents from Monday through Saturday. The D&C said they’re doing this because their operation costs are on the rise.
[snip]
The D&C said the price for Sunday’s paper is staying the same for now. They also said home delivery prices and Sunday’s single copy paper, will remain at $1.50
The prices of the daily newspapers in Buffalo and Syracuse are both 50 cents Monday through Saturday. On Sunday, the Buffalo newspaper costs $2.00 and the Syracuse paper is $1.75. We are told that price will go up to $2.00 next month.
Apparently price increases for single Gannett papers are happening across the country.
Is the D&C worth .75 cents per copy?
Related posts:
No. The D&C coverage just isn’t good enough. They treat important local stories superficially, at best, and add nothing to national or international ones.
Most of the non-local stories they print I’ve already read thanks to RSS streams.
I have often found better local coverage in the Messenger Post.
However, in the abstract, supporting a local paper and their supply chains (i.e., the new bureaus) is. That’s a large part of why I’m a subscriber.
It almost doesn’t matter, The people who claim to know imply that the entire newspaper industry will be imploding soon.
But until then, supporting the local paper is part of supporting an independent press and is worth doing even if they aren’t playing that role as well as they should be.
Page for page, the Buffalo News is a better paper. I’d be happy to subscribe to a Rochester edition, if they had one.
Well, I can say that GateHouse was certainly worth the 42 cent stock purchase. Nearly doubled the Monkeymoney in two weeks.
I’ll spring for your single copies of the D&C.
I agree, all around. Take a look at today’s paper. Section A, first page, above the fold, “From wedding bells to jail bars” about the arrest of a Batavia man who married a woman who had an order of protection out against him. Isn’t front page, above the fold supposed to be the location for the most important story?
And as has been noted in recent months, the paper has a clear slant in its editorials, even changing language to fit within its slanted view.
A few notes on today’s paper though, since we’re talking about it…
A worthy story - “Stanwix gets weekend jail for conflict of interest”, shares the front page above the fold area. The paper describes the Stanwix plea process as a “protracted, difficult plea.” Wouldn’t it be nice to know what was meant by that? On page 5A, where the story is continued, it seems that what happened is that “the plea nearly fell through at one point when Stanwix told Morse that he wasn’t sure that he had done anything wrong but believed ‘in the back of my mind’ that he must have. (So Stanwix, head of the Water Authority, former president of the leg, and former chair of the Republican party, couldn’t tell right from wrong. Hmmmm…But I digress.)
And, although the article doesn’t state this, the reason this is front page newsworthy is not just because Stanwix was a prominent Republican, but because this deal is likely so much better than deals offered to poor people who are not politically connected. Although I looked through the article before going to work, I didn’t see whether Stanwix was originally charged with a felony and whether there was a plea offer to a misdemeanor, or whether a misdemeanor was the original charge. Shouldn’t we all know whether the DA’s office made a sweet misdemeanor deal down from a felony with this guy who received over $500,000 in unearned benefits and violated conflict of interest rules?
And get this - in a side column to this article the paper prints, without comment or further reporting, a self-serving letter Stanwix handed out to members of the audience in the courtroom. So Stanwix, who sought to minimize his responsibility and claim that he didn’t know he did anything wrong (which likely led to the protracted plea proceeding as described within the article) had his self-serving notice circulated to the readership of the paper. That’s just wrong.
It’s also worth pointing out this part of the story - page 5A, where it is noted that the prosecutor, Joanne Winslow, stated Stanwix “dragged his children into his wrongdoing by having the October 2002 payment sent to them.”
So he didn’t know he did anything wrong, but hid payments by having them made to his kids. I guess this form of day care wasn’t slashed by Maggie.
Sounds like typical Monroe County Republican politics.
What other options do they have?
Newspapers all over the country are in trouble. The nature of print media is that there is a delay in reporting whereas in almost every other media important stories can be delivered immediately. Especially now that the D&C can be read online, it seems rather pointless to purchase the print edition. Plus, online corrections can be made, stories can be updated and reaction can be discussed. If readership has gone down by 50%, then an increase of price of 50% is understandable .. though if readership goes down, there is less cost in printing since less copies need to be made and less delivery chains have to be funded.
No matter how you slice it, it’s business and in the current market, Gannett has to do SOMETHING. So, I ask again: What other options do they have? I am seriously interested in knowing your opinions.
my knee jerk reaction is that the d and c isn’t worth the paper its printed on. but that is an insult to the rising cost of paper in general. but still, in today’s economy, getting a paper mache kit for 75 cents is still good value.
Gas prices are up. Paper prices are up (newsprint has been increasing something like $20 per ton per month for a few months, and the increases are expected to continue). The cost of the aluminum used in plate making has gone up.
Printing and distributing a newspaper is a manufacturing process (not a journalistic process), so when the cost of manufacturing goes up, the costs get passed on to the consumer. It’s been that way since the start of the industrial age.
they’ve got to try and make up the money somewhere, but I can’t imagine this will help. it is looking more and more like newspapers (save for major cities) will be extinct soon.
fortunately the Sunday paper didn’t go up, so I still just have to make back the 1.50 in coupons to break even.
If I were the D&C, I would start charging for access to my website and stop giving my product away for free. According to this article:
http://www.scarborough.com/press_releases/NP%20Penetration%20Report%20FINAL%202.11.08.pdf
81% of the adults in the Rochester market read either the printed product or the website at least once per week. Raising their single copy price will just drive more people to their free website. Heck, I wish I had a dollar for every time RT referenced a free D&C story on the web.
From your lips to Gannett’s ears. One of the best things that could happen to other media outlets and blogs is for the D&C to start charging for web subscriptions. Then we’d see the real value of their product to readers.
I forgot to mention that I would copyright each local story so that the blogs would not be able to print it. They could link to it, but then the consumer would have to pay to read it.
Sounds good. But they’d have to charge a good buck for the D&C. None of this $12/year b.s. Half the current paper subscription rate sounds fair (roughly $10/month).
Right - Let’s ensure we do the same for the D&C editorial board too because it worked out sooo well for the New York Times’ editorial staff. Putting Krugman, Rich and the rest behind a subscription service. Then eliminating the subscription service when peopel went elsewhere
I’m with Rotten on this one…
I agree that the price for electronic delivery should be much lower than the price for print delivery due to the lower costs. I am thinking about maybe 40% lower.
It is hard to charge strictly for someone’s opinion - everybody has one and they are all over the web. Facts are a different story.
Sorry Elmer this makes no sense.
We are talking about paid columnists from the NYT who were not behind a subscription wall then they were, the subscription project failed, and now they are not.
Regarding your comment about facts? Are you implying that they are not all over the web? What gives?
40% is fine by me. That’s about $8/month. Heck, $5/month with a year prepay is fine, too.
As soon as the D&C did that, the race would be on for the first news organization to provide more local coverage on the Internet. Perhaps City Newspaper would try, or the Messenger-Post might start covering more Rochester stories. The TV stations would be another alternative news source - they already have a physical presence at most major stories, it’s just that most of them only publish video. (13WHAM is the exception.)
My guess is that the few pieces of “exclusive to the D&C” content aren’t worth $8/month to the average person. But it would be great to find out. To be a reasonable experiment, the D&C would have to do it for 6 months or a year. By that time, I think their influence on the local market would be much diminished, and tough to regain.
I was looking to reduce the price 40%, not 60%. - if your product is good enough you shouldn’t be afraid to charge for it.
Someone can sit at their computer and give their opinion (like me) anytime. Most of the opinions they give are on facts gathered by other people.
I agree with charging to use the website, but it should be on a trial basis. I fear that if they charge for web access, they will lose even more readers.
I hope that the D&C either goes out of business or starts putting out a good paper. They’re taking up too many eyeballs for the amount of useful information they put out.
By the way, they’ve been moderating (deleting) comments & banning people from the forums (storychats, whatever…)
’bout time.
Online advertising is falling:
http://www.bizreport.com/2008/05/online_advertising_cpms_falling.html
“Not everyone in the industry thinks the drop is due to the slowing economy. “I doubt it. More likely, it’s a reflection of the glut of inventory available, and the failure of an ad-selling business model,” writes Owen Thomas at Valleywag.”
Today’s web-based newspaper ad model is totally broken. At this moment, the front web page of the D&C is showing two ads: one for Adidas and one for Hawaiian airlines. If the D&C can’t sell its most prime web space to a local advertiser, then someone needs to do a big re-think.
Agreed, but the article I mentioned refers to all online advertising, not just newspapers
I agree that most online advertising is ineffective and most savvy computer users block a lot of it. I can’t even remember the last ad I clicked on.
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