The Philadelphia Inquirer Subscription Policies Are Atrocious! (Allentown, York: home, buy)

[JimfromPennsyl]

The management of the Philadelphia Inquirer does a lousy job at producing a newspaper that ordinary people in their local community can afford. I had a subscription for home delivery and recently received a letter from the Inquirer where they told me they were raising my subscription rate from $17.35/week to $21.55/week, that is crazy high pricing for a newspaper so I just canceled it.

The management of the Philadelphia Inquirer like many management of major newspapers don't fully get it that they have a civic duty they have a vital role to play in our society and that is to educate the citizenry about what is going on in our society and how it is falling short as a good society and how do we move it toward what it should be. This not only means that they have journalists write good stories along this line but that they also sell their newspaper at an affordable price. They do the first part well but the second part they are terrible at. It makes one wonder if they don't have an agenda to kill the print edition of their newspapers; this is not so far fetched because if they can eliminate the print edition of their newspapers America will have a "less educated about public matters" citizenry and will be better able to be controlled by marketing and the political parties. Print editions of newspapers can be read more quickly than e-editions and facilitate better comprehension because the reader can scan the articles and the images with greater ease. It is also not so far fetched that wealthy people and big business executives would favor this kill the print edition of newspapers agenda because they benefit from a controlled and manipulated population that allows the status quo to continue from which they benefit and let no one kid themselves the governing board of the Inquirer isn't just made up of nice people but agents of these special interests!

The management of the Philadelphia Inquirer should have a policy where they sell not only subscription of the print edition by the week but also by a six month period and a three month period and offer compelling prices for such subscriptions like 50% off (fifty percent off) the newsstand price for a six-month subscription and forty percent off the newsstand price for a three-month subscription which turn out to be cost of $271.80 and $135.90 respectively. America's most popular newspaper The Wall Street Journal has a six months and one year offer subscriptions. The policy strategy the management has now is rather crazy and counterproductive because it entails not trying to make a great effort to keep the current subscriptions that you have by offering attractive pricing but rather they only offer small savings to current subscription holders but to "new" subscriptions they offer insane subscription pricing like 80% off (eighty percent off) and 98% off (ninety-eight percent off) where they probably make no or little money when factoring in the cost to home delivery. The current Philadelphia Inquirer management is going to kill the print edition of the paper the writing is on the wall because ordinary people aren't going to and can't afford to pay the price the management is seeking. Good management of any major city's newspaper including Philadelphia's would operate under the overall strategy that it is more important for us to produce a good newspaper that is readily affordable than a great to outstanding paper that is extremely costly and unaffordable. The management of the Philadelphia Inquirer really needs to shake itself up and besides bringing wisdom to the subscription pricing should also be cutting cost at the paper so they can sell a newsstand daily print edition of the paper at an affordable rate for ordinary people like $2.25, a price one can get a cup of coffee at because we really need our citizens to get better educated about public policy issues because polls tell us Americans are unhappy about what is going on in the country and the only way we can turn it around is at the polls so voters need to become educated about the issues so America really needs newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer to get in a lot of people's hands so they can become educated voters.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is owned by a nonprofit, our community should demand this entity serve the entire community not special interests as it does today. Leaders in our community need to see to that the current system used to select people on the governing board of the Inquirer is permanently changed and is permanently good so our community can get the governing board to not be majority comprised of elitists and people that overly cater to the unions and similar sorts but people that will get the paper to be one that is widespread read across the community and is an integral and valuable part of our Democracy!

[gwillyfromphilly]

I think you need to understand that people under the age of 60 don't actually buy newspapers. All of the major news outlets have pretty much made online subscriptions their primary focus as that is where the present and future is going. It's not surprising that outlets like The Philadelphia Inquirer are charging more for physical copies because the demand is simply not where it used to be in the past.

People who actually buy physical newspapers have shrunk dramatically over the last 30 years. It wouldn't surprise me if news outlets just completely eliminate physical newspapers all together. The people who still support newspapers today are primarily people over the age of 60 years old.

[selhars]

Not that there's anything wrong with it, but...

...this OP just posts a few times a year. All diatribes. And never comes back. One post to rant. No conversation or exchange of views.

At least this time the writer broke the tome into a few paragraphs instead of the usual entire page of just ONE block paragraph.

It's a rant just to rant.

[moneymkt]

The NY times is cheaper than the Inquirer and its a paper from a bigger city. Wonder why?

[cpomp]

Originally Posted by selhars

Not that there's anything wrong with it, but...

...this OP just posts a few times a year. All diatribes. And never comes back. One post to rant. No conversation or exchange of views.

At least this time the writer broke the tome into a few paragraphs instead of the usual entire page of just ONE block paragraph.

It's a rant just to rant.

The poster doesn't have time to respond because he/she is busy writing the next rant post! lol.

[toobusytoday]

I'm a long time Inquirer subscriber. When we moved to the Lehigh Valley 25+ years ago, I changed our subscription to just weekends. Delivery was very inconsistent. I routinely called and reported missing papers and they would be delivered later. At the last increase I called to cancel and as expected they offered me a deal on digital after I said that there was no way I was going to continue with delivery since that was not working any more. See, I think this is a chicken and egg situation. And it's going on with my local paper up here too. Delivery is inconsistent. Readership goes down, so they fire reporters and editors, readership goes down more because they aren't covering local news. I think just about all the reporters on my local paper are independents and they compete with each other for print space. I still subscribe to print because I want to support local journalism, but I also subscribe to national (and now the Inquirer) digital editions.

[moneymkt]

Am I the only one who always thought the Daily News was much better? I used to love the Phantom Rider on Septa articles

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by moneymkt

The NY times is cheaper than the Inquirer and its a paper from a bigger city. Wonder why?

The New York Times also has a readership that spans the country — it's one of only four newspapers in the country that could be called "national" newspapers (the other three being The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and USA Today).

It can spread its production costs across a larger subscriber base and also charge more for ads.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by toobusytoday

I'm a long time Inquirer subscriber. When we moved to the Lehigh Valley 25+ years ago, I changed our subscription to just weekends. Delivery was very inconsistent. I routinely called and reported missing papers and they would be delivered later. At the last increase I called to cancel and as expected they offered me a deal on digital after I said that there was no way I was going to continue with delivery since that was not working any more. See, I think this is a chicken and egg situation. And it's going on with my local paper up here too. Delivery is inconsistent. Readership goes down, so they fire reporters and editors, readership goes down more because they aren't covering local news. I think just about all the reporters on my local paper are independents and they compete with each other for print space. I still subscribe to print because I want to support local journalism, but I also subscribe to national (and now the Inquirer) digital editions.

The Morning Call in Allentown, right?