What is Fairfax doing? News today indicates that the printed version of the Sydney Morning Herald has increased 20 cents from $1.50 to $1.70. That is a price increase of 13.33% over two years (as the previous increase was in early 2010)
When inflation in Sydney is running at around 3.2 a year , this is a blatant cash grab by Fairfax.
And ultimately, it will affect circulation. Price elasticity of newspapers, while quite inelastic originally, has become a lot more elastic due to increase in substitutes (the Internet is mainly to blame for that).
Also, I have noticed the quality of the SMH has decreased in recent times, with more bylines from Associated Press and Agence France-Prees articles being added to the international news sections, instead of their own journalists.
Not only that, advertising space in the newspaper has increased rather than decrease. It is not unusual to see a large amount of full page ads in the paper everyday.
I have been buying the SMH everyday for the last 10 years and this latest price rise may send me to a competitor.
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I was buying the herald since 2000 every day of the working week, I don't buy it anymore!!
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