Pulp Friction

It’s getting pretty costly to sit down and enjoy a daily newspaper around Prince Rupert these days. (On those days that the paper doesn't get bumped off of Jazz or is forced to stay in Vancouver due to poor weather.) This month has seen both the National Post and the Daily News increase the price of their offerings, giving the newspaper buying public a few hard decisions to make by the time they put the papers out at Eddies and other newsstands across the city.

The Post decided to increase its price to match that of the Vancouver Province and the Vancouver Sun on a daily basis, giving up the dollar charge to join the big boys at close to two dollars a day for a read of national and international news.

This despite the fact that it seems that the Post is getting thinner and thinner on its weekly editions, combine that with the fact that they have little to no coverage of provincial matters in their pages and it will be interesting to see if they continue to sell high amounts of papers locally.

By contrast the Vancouver sun on Friday had eight sections ranging from 16- 12 pages each, many of course classified ads and advertising, but still if you’re going to pay 2 bucks plus for a newspaper, you at least want to feel the weight of your investment!

The local paper followed suit earlier this month as well putting its news stand price up to 71 cents before taxes, which on a weekday early in the week works out to roughly 7.1 cents per page, a pretty good corporate return for an investment that features a lot of filler in between the odd local story.

The Friday paper seems to be a more cost friendly option for the consumer as it can reach up to the 20 page plateau, which works out to a more reasonable price ratio per page, if not in content.
Of course you can pick up the Daily through a carrier for 45 cents an issue, but that comes with the inevitable risk of being held hostage to a paper carrier who may or may not be the most dedicated handler of the news, having learned from personal experience that you and your paper carrier may not have the same idea as to what constitutes on time delivery.

The Daily enclosed a letter to its readers with the Thursday paper explaining their decision to raise the price and promising more changes to the product as the months go by.

Regardless of your preferences, it’s a costly little exercise now to read the news. If you were inclined to read all the national and provincial options here in the northern trading district you would be shelling out close to eight dollars a day. The Post, Sun and Province are all in at 2 dollars per issue, the Globe while a day late, checks in at a bargain at under a dollar and the Daily News thin as it is at 10 pages on a Monday, is 75 cents with taxes. Picking a newspaper is beginning to require the sage studies of a stock investor, which paper gives you the best return for your daily investment!

There are all those free papers that clutter up your mailbox and the news stand entrances, but it’s debatable if they are read at all let alone have much an impact on the daily seeker of news information.

Of course for those dedicated to the concept of thumbing through newsprint, a trip to the Library saves you the need to break a ten, but you had best move fast, the requests for papers there goes up incrementally with each increase at the news stand.

Then there’s the net, with a simple use of the Google search engine at Google News Canada, you can put together the newspaper of your interests with a click of a mouse, leaving you a fair amount of money to spend on other interests and keeping your hands free of ink.

Then again it offers up its own health hazard, eye strain could soon be the affliction of the future for those that need to know the news as it happens!