To Offset Declining Sales, Paper Raises Price

February 4, 2005

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P-I, Times single-copy price to be 50 cents (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Financial troubles at The Seattle Times Co. are becoming more apparent to the city’s daily newspaper readers. The company, which handles business operations for both The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, plans to double the single-copy price of both newspapers to 50 cents from 25 cents beginning Feb. 28, in an attempt to offset rising costs.

Makes sense to me. In fact, since BlogAds sales have declined since the election, I’ve been thinking of doubling prices. Heck, I might triple them–I could use the money, what with rising bandwidth costs and all.

2 responses to “To Offset Declining Sales, Paper Raises Price”

bryan

February 4, 2005 at 10:08 pm

I’m surprised these two are still charging 25 cents. Every paper I’ve worked for has been at least 50 cents since at least the mid-90s.

No wonder the Times is such a money loser, if that’s the way their management runs things.
dw

February 5, 2005 at 1:55 am

Both papers were at 50 cents in the late 90s, but they were both ravaged by a newspaper strike in 2000-01 (the Times more than the P-I, since the P-I caved pretty early while the Times tried to break the union.) During the strike the Times was free; once the strike ended both papers settled on 25 cents as a “make-right” price and never raised it.

Whether the Times is failing or not is a matter of great conjecture. They outsell the P-I 2-1, control the JOA, and are generally popular in the state, setting themselves up between the liberal and pro-union P-I and the local, more conservative papers (Spokane’s Spokesman-Review, Vancouver’s Columbian). What’s really going on is that the Times is trying to drive Hearst out of town, and they’re not doing a very good job of it. The Times is intentionally losing money and not hiding it very well.

Eventually, one paper will win out in Seattle, and it’s a tossup as to who does. It’s possible, too, that the Everett and Tacoma papers could try to extend their coverage into Seattle.