Trying to sell a newspaper at the price of a moped is funny enough, until you realise that The New York Times is doing just that. Although their website quotes a price of INR 49 per week, the offer cutting nearly half the cover price is valid for only the first year. Yet, this discount is also high enough a price to fall flat in the market.
If The New York Times, or the International New York Times, wishes to make any mark at all, they will not only have to set up several more printing facilities across the globe, they will also have to make cleverer ties with existing local and/or national newspapers.
Fancy some costly Times?
The Times’ current list of affiliations includes papers in Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea1 and no presence whatsoever in Asia’s largest economies: China and India.
Information, fame and prestige
What exactly is the newspaper gunning for here? To spread information, to gain a name or to become a matter of prestige? If it is the latter, the tactic seems to be working among several people I have talked to. If it is fame, I cannot say. But if it is information, alas, we have entered a murky area where newspapers, in general, hold no trump cards.
This is the age of (cheaply available, hordes of) information and if The Times wants to be taken for anything more than an avoidable expenditure, it has to sell itself like any other business: with competitive prices, better printing facilities, more printing facilities and a sold network of distributors. Marketing as merely a source of news is like living in denial: the BBC, for example, provides ample free and excellent reportage via its mobile applications. Paper is not dying, but it is hardly a strong contender against more flexible, updated and more convenient smart-devices.
In a world of alternatives, what really justifies The Times’ overpricing?
The Times’ current agreement with several local papers to distribute on their behalf seems to be working because it is an advantage to both parties involved. However, around the end of last year, their biggest Spanish partner, El País, broke off its agreement after one of its columnists wrote in The New York Times that the national newspaper had financial problems which were creeping into its journalism in the form of censorship.
Opinions galore
The pricing problem is not with India alone. One look at the Hong Kong pricing puts The Times at HK$725 per quarter, or about $8 per day: twice the price of other newspapers in Hong Kong which are all famously already in a price war that is constantly forcing down the price of newspapers2.
Photograph by Torrenegra via Flickr.
Assuming the pricing is as bleak everywhere in Asia, it is worthwhile to focus on what does prompt someone to buy The Times. I cannot speak for others here, but I would, myself, buy the newspaper only for the opinion pages. But here too, let us be honest: is there any shortage of opinion outside of The Times? Quality is certainly one argument, but unless you are completely biased it would be unrealistic to say there is no alternative. The question then comes down to something much more fundamental: in a world of alternatives, what really justifies The Times‘ overpricing?
I think it is a combination of three things: journalism, history (and in turn prestige) and printing/distributing costs. While all of them are understandable, one of them really can be given up. The prestige quotient, especially if it really does stem from The Times’ enviable, successful and respectable history, should boost people’s urge to subscribe to it, but it ought not drive prices up. The idea with settling for a less costly newspaper does not necessarily mean settling for cheaper journalism; but if The Times wants to turn its profits and revenues skywards, it will have to do drop, not raise, its subscription fees and in turn garner more readers — which should not be all that difficult seeing that it is an excellent newspaper after all.
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