I had a very nice phone conversation with a reader the other day, and I was so glad she called because she was asking about something that I wanted to address in a “Pub Chat” one of these days but hadn’t gotten around to. Until now.
“Why,” she asked, “does the Saturday paper have a different price every once in a while?”
It was a great question, and she didn’t realize how perfectly timely it was because today is actually one of those handful of days when our weekend edition is priced at $3.75 instead of the normal $2.75.
She was elderly, on a fixed income, and a longtime home subscriber — I think she said 45 years, for which I thanked her. Because she’s a home subscriber, the $1 price increase doesn’t really affect her too much, other than it will make her subscription run out a couple of days sooner; however, because she is on a fixed income, it certainly does affect her, which we recognize.
Meanwhile, for those buying the paper on the newsstand, it costs that extra buck today.
But here’s the reason behind the bump: A few Saturdays a year we produce special sections or add extra pages that cost us more to print than the normal three-section weekend editions cost. There are a number of reasons why this could be: Sometimes, we need to hire freelancers to write the stories or take the photos for a special section; sometimes, we use special stock or even glossy paper, especially if it’s a magazine like our popular Vacation Guide, which will come out in May; even if it’s a section printed on regular newsprint, such as today’s Wine Country Wedding section, the cost of that newsprint has gone through the roof during the pandemic (like so many other things); sometimes, we fill the sections out with extra syndicated content, which we also have to pay for. And, sometimes, it’s a combination of those factors.
We call these editions “premiums,” and I like to think that they have extra value for readers, even though they cost a little bit extra. In every edition, in the fine print under circulation on Page 3A, we note that there will be Premium editions — no more than seven — throughout the year, but I realize how people feel about reading “the fine print.” I feel that way about fine print too — trust me.
The only other Premium edition we’ve had so far this year was on Jan. 29, when we published a Winter Career Guide section and our glossy 2022 Business Card Directory. Future ones are planned for the Saturdays such as when we release our Vacation Guide, and our salute to area high school graduates, and our annual Community Giving section. Two specialty items went into today’s paper that caused the higher sticker price: a separate, 12-page Wine Country Weddings special section and a few extra pages in the regular paper C section devoted to job searches.
Now, we realize that not each of our specialty items that lead to these Premium days is of interest to every single reader — in fact, the woman I spoke with said she wasn’t planning on getting married at 75 years old, nor was she looking for a job. I get it, but it still costs us more to produce those publications that we feel are of general interest to many readers.
I tried to think of an analogy and the only one I could come up with on short notice was coffee. I asked the woman if, for example, she had ever walked into her favorite coffee shop to order her usual $3 cup of joe only to find out that the price had risen to $4 that day. She said she had. I asked her if she walked out or if she had paid the extra $1, and she said she usually pays the additional cost.
I told her that was sort of the situation here, only in our case, the price will go back down to its normal price of $2.75 next Saturday, something that won’t happen in your favorite coffee shop where the price increase will be the new normal (and please don’t get me wrong, these bumps on Premium editions don’t have anything to do with the occasional subscription rate hikes that we have to institute to balance the budget!).
I get that money is tight for a lot of folks these days — even in my house we’re clipping coupons and counting pennies, nickels and dimes. But the unfortunate fact is that prices are on the rise, not only to buy your Corn Flakes and gasoline, but also to produce a daily newspaper. We run various promotional sayings at times on our front page, such as, “Invest in your community by supporting local journalism,” and they’re not meant to simply separate you from your money; they are meant to say that we hope you appreciate what we do and how we do it.
The fact is, though, that usually when we run one of these Premium days on a weekend, our Circulation Manager Jeff Bacon is busy on Monday taking calls from disgruntled readers, asking why the price went up with no notice. Jeff tries to explain things as I’ve written them in this “Pub Chat,” but often a handful of folks cancel their subscriptions.
So, on the one hand, the occasional bumps in price help us pay for our added expenses, but on the other hand we sometimes lose some subscribers because of it. Such is the balancing act that we are trying to pull off.
At the end of our conversation, I asked the woman if she was good with what I had explained. She said she understood and she really didn’t mind paying the extra 7 bucks a year, though she still wasn’t crazy about it. And she made it a point to tell me she definitely didn’t need the bridal section.
I told her I understood as well, and that I wasn’t crazy about paying an extra buck for my coffee every day.
from Hire Freelancers – My Blog https://www.techyrack.com/syndication/2022/04/30/pub-chat-a-premium-discussion-opinion-fltimes-com-finger-lakes-times/
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment