Single-Copy Price Stays Put

By: Mark Fitzgerald Raising the cover price of single-copy papers has become the third rail of the newspaper industry.

Even when newspapers are searching for nearly any source of revenue to offset the plunge in classified advertising and the lingering effect of past newsprint price increases, most executives say they aren't even thinking of raising the retail price of their paper.

"People in the United States just take their newspaper as an entitlement. It's a big deal when you go up on your single-copy price," MediaNews Group Inc. Vice Chairman and CEO William Dean Singleton said.

He should know: In March, when the Los Angeles Times returned its cover price to 50 cents after five years in which it boosted circulation at 25 cents a copy, MediaNews' Southern California dailies followed suit. There was a predictable falloff in circulation at nearly all the papers -- but a steep plunge in circulation at the Press-Telegram in Long Beach.

"Long Beach competes much less with the Times [than with] the Torrance Daily Breeze on the west and The Orange County Register on the east and south. They both stayed at 25 cents -- so Long Beach took a bigger hit than any of the other papers," Singleton said.

Just 10 days after instituting the increase, the Press-Telegram rolled back its price to a quarter.

Price adjustments are like that, said Pulitzer Newspapers Inc. (PNI) Senior Vice President Mark G. Contreras: "It does have an immediate effect. If you lower the price, you pick up copies, and if you raise it, you feel the drop immediately." Though parent Pulitzer Inc. emphasizes growing revenue, a hike in the cover prices of PNI's papers is unlikely, he said.

That's what the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) is hearing almost across the board, said John Murray, vice president for circulation marketing. While NAA gets an increasing number of calls from papers discreetly asking about rules for credit-card payments for home-delivery subscriptions, calls mulling retail-price hikes are quite rare. "The cause and effect that a price increase has on single-copy sales is just so well-documented," he said.

Indeed, in a recently released report, NAA found the median single-copy price industrywide for a daily paper has been stuck at 50 cents for six years.

"I honestly believe there's no room to grow beyond 50 cents," said Singleton. Almost all MediaNews papers are at 50 cents. The chain increased one paper, the Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner, to 75 cents several years ago. A mistake, Singleton said: The paper immediately lost 30% of its single-copy sales, "and it never came back."

It's not just the circulation drop that prevents price hikes. These days, papers don't see as much of the new revenue because more copies are sold at stores and other over-the-counter locations that demand a cut. The new NAA study notes that, in only two years, news-rack sales have dropped to 35% of all daily single-copy sales from 40%; fully 70% of Sunday single-copy sales come from retail locations.

Still, a few papers have raised their prices this year. This winter, The Wall Street Journal increased its cover price to $1. And only weeks ago, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times increased the retail price of its daily paper to 35 cents inside its core circulation area, while keeping the price a quarter in outlying counties where competition with The Tampa Tribune is more intense.

It had been 17 years since the last cover-price hike. In a note to readers, Times Editor and President Paul Tash observed that if the price had kept pace with inflation since 1984, it would sell for 43 cents. Still, the Times expected a big drop in single-copy sales.

But Times spokeswoman Anthea Penrose, speaking on behalf of Circulation Director Tommie Anne McLeod, said the paper has been pleasantly surprised that the falloff has not been as much as anticipated. Penrose said it's anyone's guess why the drop wasn't larger: "A lot of our market, of course, consists of transplants from other places, and 35 cents is still less than they're paying in Indiana or wherever."