Complete Story
03/13/2015
Price hikes explain single copy declines
By Ken Doctor, Nieman Journalism Lab
Have you bought a lonely single copy of a newspaper lately, from a newsstand or a newspaper box? Probably not. Neither are many other people.
Single-copy newspaper sales — which not that long ago made up as much as 15 to 25 percent of sales — are obsolescent, dropping in double digits per year and, for many papers, 25 to 50 percent or more in just the past three years. Single copy is just one corner of a disappearing world, and it’s one we’ve paid little attention to. In its decline, though, we can see the print-to-digital transformation from another angle.
Why the drop? Of course, digital reading is a prime reason, propelled by the smartphone revolution; more than one billion smartphones were shipped for sale around the world last year, a mind-boggling number.
But it’s not the only reason. Right up there on the list would be newspaper company strategy, as expressed in its pricing decisions. Call it quarteritis — a piling on of quarters, raising single-copy prices from 50 cents to 75 cents and then to a dollar and more.
Publishers have applied the same pricing theory to both home delivery and single-copy selling over the last four years or so: Get a lot more money from somewhat fewer readers, and come out financially ahead overall. In revenue, the theory has worked, driving flat-to-positive circulation revenue in a time of declining subscriber bases — though publishers’ pricing power may have peaked quite quickly. Look at a company like Gannett, whose circulation revenue was down 0.9 percent for 2014, despite — or because of — some of the most aggressive price increases in industry. Gannett’s 25 percent-plus price increases for home delivery aren’t unusual for the industry.
The upward pricing of newsstand copies across the industry has also been dramatic, as measured by the Alliance for Audited Media last year. For the first time, the most common price for a daily newsstand paper hit $1; the most common price for Sunday is now $2.
These higher prices have driven these major single-copy declines. They prompt a major question: Has the newspaper industry further accelerated its own decline through its shock treatment of single-copy buyers?
