Newspapers Want You To Pay Extra For Papers That Have LOTS Of Advertising

Newspapers might charge
you extra for those big, fat
Black Friday editions
the day after Thanksgiving 

Lord knows the newspaper industry is going through some tough times and they need to cut expenses and gain revenue as much as they can.

Newspapers are laying off staffers left and right. (I was one of those victims of newspaper layoffs in the summer of 2013, but I'm not feeling so much like a victim at this point.)

But the following seems like too much:

Those of you who are still getting print newspapers delivered to your door might be in for a surprise on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Newspapers on Black Friday are usually stuffed with tons and tons and TONS of advertising, inserts and flyers to get you all set for the Christmas shopping season.

A number of newspapers, says media watcher Jim Romenesko, will charge you extra for the paper with all the extra advertising. They're calling these fat, advertising stuffed papers, "premium issues"

Oooh! Premium! We all want to get charged extra for all
those extra ads the newspapers are making extra money on.

Let's get this straight:  Newspapers get a needed extra revenue boost at Thanksgiving through many advertisers. And readers now get to pay extra for the privilege of pawing through all those advertisements to see if they can find any nuggets of news in those newspapers.

The logic from the newspapers is you get all these nice wonderful coupons from advertisers, so you save money, if you go shopping at the advertisers' stores.  The newspapers are trying to grab that money back from you for their own bottom line.

Granted, we're not talking a lot of money for newspaper subscribers here. Maybe a couple bucks.

But this extra charge for "premium papers" has the potential to drive readers away. The point of all those advertisers advertising is to catch the eyeballs of readers. But if those readers are driven away, there's no eyeballs, hence no reason to advertise in the paper.

Next Thanksgiving, maybe these advertisers will find somewhere else to tell us all about their wild, wonderful Christmas season deals, rather than your local paper. So less revenue comes in. There's more layoffs. Less news, less advertising, and the newspapers' downward spiral continues.

It makes you wonder whether newspapers so desperate they are trying to commit suicide?

To me, this is more evidence that journalism will survive, but many print newspapers, and their parent media companies, might not.