Detroit papers DOUBLE their daily newsstand price

for years i had gotten packages of pretzel nuggets at the office vending machine. then one day last year i noticed that the pretzel company was putting fewer pretzels in the same bag, but still charging as much.

so i decided not to buy those pretzels anymore.

then i thought to myself "oh, that's what people are going to be doing with us."

 

Do the math people. It's a no brainer. Just a random Tuesday, say they sell 100,000 at .50 is $50,000. Now they doubled that revenue just on a Tuesday. It's just easy revenue and long overdue. The papers are going to double their sales revenue in one magic motion.

Even if they lose 25 percent of circulation, they still make out because they bring in more money and have less paper to print and deliver and ink to waste. Newspapers have to stop being addicted to advertisers and have to start charging for the content. Advertising is not coming back anywhere near what it was.

That means circulation isn't the most important thing (or at least as important as it used to be). It's more the old 1890s business of selling papers on the street at full price.

The answer now is charge more for your product and have less circulation to keep news print and delivery costs down.

The business has to wean itself off advertisers.

 

Well, actually... no. He wanted Lloyd Carr fired for years and prided himself on being the anti-Wojo.
So no, he does neither. Thanks for playing.

 

I thought everyone wanted Lloyd fired? Well, except for Mustang of course.

 

What's funny is that you actually thought one of the biggest anti-SE Michigan people did research and didn't lead witch hunts.

 

The difference is no one takes Drew seriously...

 

Your picture is missing.

 

I could be wrong about this, but doesn't Detroit have something like a 27 percent unemployment rate? Yeah, sounds like a smart move ... if you want to circle down the drain a little faster.

 

The suburbs are more like 15 percent and really that's all that matters. Nobody lives downtown.

 

That explains all the layoffs in garbage collectors and mail carriers then.

 

Whatever point you are trying to make is lost on me. Very few people live downtown.

 

Only point is, that 27 percent unemployment rate or whatever it is is a percent of "something." It cannot be 27 percent of no one (all those no ones who don't live downtown).

If no one lives downtown, no garbage needs to be collected, no mail needs to be delivered. No one even has to clear away the tumbleweeds.

Besides, a 15 percent rate in the suburbs ought to be concern enough -- which still supports FishHack's point.

Charge more for a paper, further constrict the size of its audience, turn it into an almost elite publication (not the general, everyman medium it was supposed to be) and bleed away more relevance and reason for its existence at all. Brilliant.