The huge majority of people who read The Plain Dealer do so by subscribing, but people who buy the paper on newsstands will see higher prices starting Monday: $5 on Sundays and $3 the rest of the week.
It’s part of our continuing effort to sustain local journalism for the long term. Anyone familiar with this column knows that the cost of producing all of the content that millions of people consume each month is significant. We continuously evaluate how we generate the revenue needed to keep our content flowing.
We do offer a simple strategy for avoiding that price increase:
Subscribe. It’s so much better of a deal.
Not only is the cost of a subscription far less than the cost of buying the paper at the newsstand, but when you subscribe, you get a lot more than a printed copy of The Plain Dealer.
First, you get the e-edition. I read the e-edition every day and have for years. It’s a digital replica of the newspaper. I read it on a tablet.
Next, you get access to everything we publish on cleveland.com, including stories published for subscribers only. Last summer, we started offering subscribers special access to a lot of our content. People who buy The Plain Dealer at the newsstand don’t get the access. Subscribers do. And it’s not just the content on our site. You get full access to all of the content on all of our sister sites, including mlive.com in Michigan and pennlive.com in Pennsylvania.
Think about that. If you’re a sports fan, you can see what our Pennsylvania colleagues are saying about Eagles and the Steelers, what our Michigan colleagues are saying about Michigan and Michigan State.
You also get Football Insider, our special package of content about the surging Cleveland Browns. This includes messages via Subtext, in which our talented Browns writers send texts to your phone each day with their thoughts about the news of the day. It’s one of the most popular things we do, and it’s all included in a subscription.
And you get our coronavirus text alerts. We started these last spring, and more than 14,000 people signed up for them. People have told us repeatedly how much these messages have informed and reassured them. We decided last month to begin providing these messages only to subscribers.
Finally, when you subscribe and support our journalism, you help people who do not have the means to subscribe. Most of the content on our website remains free, something we are able to do because of the people who support us through subscriptions.
Now, I know a bunch of you will write me to criticize the newsstand price increase. People who read this column are not shy about sharing their feelings with me. I get it. It’s a steep increase. But please do consider that we offer a way to avoid it through subscriptions.
We have an introductory rate of $4.50 for home delivery four days a week, with all of the access I describe above to the digital edition seven days a week and content on our sister sites. We also have a $3.69 introductory rate that gets you home delivery on Sunday and Wednesday, with the same digital access. Or, you can subscribe for Sunday-only home delivery for $2.49 a week – half the newsstand price – with the full digital access.
Subscribing is simple. Go to this link. https://subscribe.plaindealer.com/
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