How much does newspaper home delivery cost?

Here's a challenge for those who consider themselves web-savvy: tell me the weekly home delivery rates for the New York Times. If you can't do that, then give me the weekly home delivery rates for any other newspaper, along with a link to the page where they're listed.

I have something of an advantage, in that I already get home delivery of the New York Times, which means that I have a login to various bits of the website which require a username and password to see. But still I can't find a page anywhere with the rates on it. Of course, it's easy to find introductory rates for the first 12 weeks of a subscription, but there's no indication of what the rates will be thereafter.

The only page I can find is this one, which tells us that home delivery rates went up from $4.25 per week in 1989 to $4.50 per week in 1990. Using the Minneapolis Fed's inflation calculator, we can determine that $4.50 in 1990 is equivalent, in real terms, to $6.97 today. On the other hand, in 1990 the New York Times had much less competition, and no one was getting their news off the internet for free – which meant that the Times could basically, as a monopoly, charge whatever it wanted. Today, anybody who gives up a subscription can get 95% of the same content for free, and the other 5% for $49.95 per year, or just under a dollar per week. So one might expect that the price of home delivery would have gone down.

But one would be wrong. It hasn't gone down in nominal terms, and it hasn't gone down even in real terms. In fact, according to a slip of paper which fell out of my newspaper today, the price for weekly delivery of the New York Times is now going up to $9.90 – which works out to $515 per year. That's an increase of 42%, in real terms, since 1990.

Obviously, the Times is a little bit embarrassed by this, since it reveals its rates nowhere on its website. $515 per year is a lot of money, and I think that many Times subscribers might be shocked at how much they're paying on an annual basis, if they ever bothered to work it out. (One cute little trick the Times has which makes the rate seem a little cheaper: it bills every four weeks, rather than every month.) But I have a more theoretical question, now that I'm a professional econoblogger: what kind of economic theory would predict rising real prices in a period of vastly increased competition?

Posted by Felix at 12:43 EST

Comments

I believe there is a reason for this-- the subscription/delivery cost varies where you are ordering from.

Posted by: Chris at 18:31 EST, October 28, 2006

I'm ordering from New York City -- the cheapest place for NYT delivery.

Posted by: Felix at 20:45 EST, October 28, 2006

The NYT policy sounds rational to me and still reasonably priced. What do you think is the demand elasticity for subscriptions? I guess it is quite low. Maybe you should also be asking why subscriptions were so cheap before (easier access to print advertising and so more advertising revenue per extra copy sold?). And maybe the NYT makes so much money from web advertising that they do not want to subsidize print subscriptions.

For comparison I have just taken out a (free) trial subscription to the FT. Their rate for home delivery in London is £6.20 per week, with delivery guaranteed by 7.00 am; or you can get it for £4 with vouchers and no delivery and (if you wish) pay for delivery by a newsagent. FT.com then costs a further £1 per week.

Posted by: Roger at 4:44 EST, October 29, 2006

I guess I am not quite clear on the problem.

The basic product -- 52 Sunday issues (52 x $2.00=$104) and 313 daily issues (313 x 50 cts= $156.50) -- (of course I may be way off on the newstand prices in NYC) gives us a total street price of $260.50.

So delivery costs are about $255/year ($515-$260) or about 70 cts/day. Did I get the arithmetic right?

Sounds fair to me for the convenience -- and I guess you think so too or else you wouldn't be paying it. No?

Posted by: David Sucher at 11:37 EST, October 29, 2006

Present for you:

http://tinyurl.com/y62u8y

Posted by: Matthew at 3:14 EST, October 31, 2006

Aha! Thanks! So the big rise was over the course of the 1990s -- although the price has still gone up by 24% in nominal terms and 8% in real terms since 2001.

Posted by: Felix at 9:18 EST, October 31, 2006

Newsagents in Australia - small business owners who deliver newspapers and run retail businesses selling newspapers and magazines - get between 50 cents and 70 cents a week for a seven day home delivery of a newspaper. We've had one increase in ten years. We are worse off today in real terms than ten years ago yet wages, fuel and other costs have risen in real terms.

Posted by: mark fletcher at 5:50 EST, November 28, 2006

Posted by: mark fletcher at 5:55 EST, November 28, 2006

just a quick note:

I tried using the "site:" advanced search operator within google to find the information you are looking for. I couldnt find it but, nonetheless, the "site:" command can prove to be very useful when searching a website with a large amount of indexed pages, e.g., nytimes.com . Essentially, this command will search every page, on the domain "www.nytimes.com", that Google has indexed.

to use, type into google search:
"text searching for" + "(blank_space)" + "site:" + "www.site.com"

For Example:
"newspaper prices site:www.nytimes.com"
(copy text inside quotes - not quotes themselves)

Posted by: Jeff Pannone at 13:09 EST, December 30, 2007

I never thought about the charges involved in the delivery of newspaper to home. Really, you are a great Finance professional. The calculations, comparisons, percentages...everything you have done on this subject. Nice Article, thanks!
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Posted by: eusvisa at 2:15 EST, May 01, 2008

I'm much satisfied with Discounted Newspapers subscription...

Posted by: Allana at 1:46 EST, May 09, 2008