Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Subscription deal: Same for three days or Sunday

The Flint Journal has its offer up for the 3-day a week paper. Interestingly, the cost per month, no matter what deal you choose, is the same whether you just want the Sunday paper or the three-day delivery.

Customers in Saginaw and Bay City get a worse deal. I don't see an offer for a Sunday-only delivery there.

By comparison you can receive a whole week's worth of newspapers in Grand Rapids for $1 or $2 more.

OK, here are the rest of the chain: Jackson, Kalamazoo, and Muskegon. Ann Arbor is still advertising its rates even though it ceases publication at the end of July.

The home-delivered price will now be about $1 an issue, which right now is more than buying it at a newspaper box. If anyone has heard whether the box price is going up please leave an anonymous post. Of course, if you only get the Sunday paper the price will be about $3 an issue for a home delivered Sunday paper.

And yes, my wife and I will continue our subscription after the paper collapses to a three-day delivery schedule. As long as I have friends working there we will continue to buy and support the paper.

Lately, the Detroit News has been sending us copies of their paper for free, which is nice.

Here is the Detroit News offer and the Detroit Free Press offer. (They look to be the same). You will have to click on the appropriate box to see the offers.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since this 3-day garbage was announced last month, I've had at least 15 people tell me they've had enough of the newspaper and have stopped their subscriptions. This is on top of the several who became fed up with the dumbed-down, pamphlet-sized paper of the past few months and already had stopped their subscriptions.

inky said...

Offering less and charging more wasn't a sound business proposition when times were flush -- it's even less so in the midst of a deep recession.

I used to think the people running Newhouse were ruthlessly shrewd businesspeople. Today? Not so much.

Anonymous said...

The newstand price is supposedly staying the same as it is now.

Anonymous said...

Oh, they're ruthlessly shrewd.

Anyone here want to chime in on why so many papers in Michigan got new presses 5-6 years ago, and the ramifications of that move????

Hint: It benefited the Newhouse family greatly. The worker bees? Not quite so much.

Anonymous said...

Well from what I had heard they either had to re-invest the money they spent on the presses or lose it . I think they wrote it off for 5 years and now it's time for us to all pay for them. I really can't see how they are losing money now with so many severed employees and previous "Buyouts". I added a rough 6 million less they will pay out in wages between Sag, Bay city and Flint. (Probably a low ball) That is not even counting the money they will save on insurance cost for these folks. I really think they are all jumping on the band wagon now. Too bad. A good friend of mine is losing his job and had worked for the company for 23 years and said he would have gave them 23 more. The worst part about this company is that they could get rid of a GREAT employee and then lose a million dollars resulting from it and not even know why or how it happened. 3 day paper was just to void the job guarantees. Now they are taking back wages promised to employees to boot. NO HONOR AMONGST THIEVES!! SICKENING!!