While I was writing about my increased spending on news content, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal thinks prices of U.S. newspapers should be higher:
In fact, Mr. Kann said he thinks publishers in general have underpriced their products.
“No one in this room thinks twice about spending $2 buying a bad cup of coffee walking through an airport,” he said, adding that “we’re probably all too cautious about raising subscription prices.”
I agree, but with one caveat. If newspapers raise the price of subscriptions (or eliminate free online news), they need to listen to readers more. Most U.S. newspapers get 80-85% of their revenue from advertisers. Thus publishers listen to advertisers before they listen to readers. (A prime example of this is that readers prefer tabloid format papers, but advertisers like the large pages of broadsheet papers – thus there are not many U.S. tabloid format papers).
Perhaps editors and publishers are scared to raise prices because it would make them more beholden to their readers. Why would you want to let readers tell you how to do your job?