Posted by chicagomedia.org on March 19, 2009 at 15:59:10:
Chicago Sun-Times raising newsstand price to 75 cents
The Chicago Sun-Times is raising its Monday-through-Saturday single-copy retail price by a quarter to 75 cents, beginning March 30.
The change, which the Sun-Times reported on its Web site Thursday, is the Sun-Times' first single-copy price change in five years, when it upped the cost from 35 cents to 50 cents.
The single-copy price of the Sunday Sun-Times will not be affected.
Sun-Times Media Group management, in a memo to employees citing "economic necessities, including the rising costs of production," said none of the company's other area papers are raising their prices at this time.
With the 50 percent increase, the Sun-Times will match the single-copy newsstand price of the Monday-through-Saturday Chicago Tribune, which went to 75 cents from 50 cents in January 2008.
The Tribune earlier this year re-launched its weekday single-copy edition in a tabloid size, like the Sun-Times, in a play for customers who prefer the commuter-friendly format to the broadsheet presentation Tribune subscribers continue to receive.
"This is one of many initiatives designed to help secure a long-term future for the Sun-Times and best manage our cost of operations," said the staff memo from Sun-Times Media Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Jeremy L. Halbreich and President and Chief Operating Officer Rick Surkamer as well as Chicago Sun-Times and Pioneer Press Publisher John Barron.
Newsstand circulation figures heavily in the health of the Sun-Times as its single-copy sales of 186,626 copies represent around 60 percent of its paid weekday average of 313,176 for the six-month period ending in September, the most recent figures available through the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Single-copy sales only accounted for 9 percent, or 46,495 papers, of the Chicago Tribune's paid weekday circulation average of 516,032 for the same span, according to ABC numbers.
The Tribune also publishes RedEye, a free tabloid-size commuter edition introduced in 2002, which the Tribune has said averages distribution of around 200,000 copies.
The Sun-Times Group's new leadership team, installed last month after a shareholder-led effort to upend the company's previous board and arrest losses, not only faces the challenges of industry-wide revenue declines. The company also is weighed down by the debilitating legacies of the scandal-scarred reign of now-imprisoned global press baron Conrad Black.
It was the Sun-Times' price increase in 2004 that led to then-Publisher John Cruickshank's discovery that the paper had been misstating its circulation and overcharging advertisers in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Cruickshank had sought to see how many fewer papers the Sun-Times was selling at the higher price, when he found the faulty figures. The paper emerged from nearly four years of censure by ABC a year ago.
(Phil Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune)