{"id":20745,"date":"2017-12-26T23:22:23","date_gmt":"2017-12-27T06:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=20745"},"modified":"2017-12-26T23:23:26","modified_gmt":"2017-12-27T06:23:26","slug":"gazette-prices-take-another-big-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/12\/gazette-prices-take-another-big-hike\/","title":{"rendered":"Gazette prices take another big hike"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

If you still want your news delivered the old-fashioned way, the price is going up — again.<\/p><\/div>\n

When legendary Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko encountered a reader who didn\u2019t like his latest column, he would reach into his pocket for a quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s your money back,\u201d Royko would say.<\/p>\n

\"DC\"<\/a>

David Crisp<\/p><\/div>\n

The cost of buying off angry readers has increased. Could I have $1.59 please, Mr. Royko?<\/p>\n

That non-arbitrary number was calculated from a letter I got from the Billings Gazette to inform me of a \u201cchange\u201d in my subscription rate. In business letters, \u201cchange\u201d is a synonym for \u201cincrease,\u201d so I braced myself. Beginning Jan. 16, the letter said, my Gazette subscription would cost $48.50 a month.<\/p>\n

Wow. We are paying $40.28 now, so this is a 20 percent increase, if my eighth-grade math skills haven\u2019t failed me. The last time<\/a> I wrote about this topic, in July 2016, I was paying only $33.60 a month. That\u2019s an increase in less than two years of 44 percent, during a time when inflation has been running less than 2 percent<\/a>. There goes my tax cut.<\/p>\n

So what am I getting for my capital investment? The letter lists four items of new content: do-it-yourself ideas, the Brain Busters puzzle section, a Destinations travel section and \u201cfour annual special issues of better, featuring content from such well known magazines as Better Homes and Gardens.\u201d<\/p>\n

After I deciphered the syntax of that last entry, I realized there was nothing on that list I wanted. I have never consciously read an issue of \u201cbetter\u201d or of Better Homes and Gardens.\u00a0 I like Brain Busters but wouldn\u2019t pay for it. Do-it-yourself projects are tough enough without having to read about them. And if I could afford to travel, I wouldn\u2019t be fretting about the cost of my newspaper subscription.<\/p>\n

This all comes at a time when I\u2019m already worried about the cost of my news consumption \u2013 not that I spend too much but too little. The Sunday TV news shows were talking this week about the importance of vigorous and independent media during the Trump era. Several of the Sabbath Gasbags were saying that people are beginning to realize that even in the internet age, people have to willingly pay for news if they want to keep the media strong and free.<\/p>\n

It made me think of how much news I take in and how little I pay for it, at least in cash. There are other costs: the ads cleverly disguised to look like stories, the pop-up ads that block me mid-story, the endless links to \u201cYou won\u2019t believe what she looks like today\u201d stories.<\/p>\n

I finally felt so guilty about how much time I was spending at the Atlantic<\/a> website that I bought a subscription to the print magazine. But when the free access to the Washington Post website that came with my Gazette subscription ran out, I didn\u2019t bother to pay the Post to keep it going.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t help that the Gazette never told me that the deal with the Post had ended. I found out by clicking on Post stories and getting turned down again and again.<\/p>\n

The Gazette keeps subscriptions mysterious. I couldn\u2019t find an annual subscription rate by going through the Gazette website, but when I Googled it I got to a page<\/a> that said the yearly rate was $493.30. The current rate of $40.28 per month adds up to $483.36 a year. So it\u2019s actually cheaper to pay by the month than by the year.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>While I was at the Gazette\u2019s website, I signed onto my account to see if I could figure out why the Gazette site keeps asking me a survey question before letting me read a story. But I got a message saying, \u201cThis subscription cannot be linked at this time.\u201d Then on the Gazette\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> I found a message saying no more survey questions.<\/p>\n

Note to the Gazette: I always pick the last answer to survey questions. Adjust your results accordingly.<\/p>\n

Now, survey or not, the Gazette wants to raise my annual rate by nearly $100, to $582. And then there\u2019s that odd wording at the bottom of the rate increase letter. Covering five lines in what appears to be four-point type, the note says that certain premium editions of the Gazette cost more than the regular rate, including the Thanksgiving issue and up to 20 additional premium editions each year for up to $5 each.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese charges will be reflected in your account and may accelerate the expiration date of your subscription,\u201d the note said.<\/p>\n

When similar wording appeared on my 2016 rate \u201cchange\u201d letter, I called the Gazette and asked what it meant. I was assured that I could safely ignore it. The monthly rate was all I would pay.<\/p>\n

If I were a real journalist, of the sort that deserves public generosity, I would have called back again this year. But I composed this piece on Christmas Eve, and I didn\u2019t have the heart to call. Nobody should have to deal with a cranky customer like me on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n

Besides, probably none of that 20 percent rate increase is going to the one who would have to take the call.<\/p>\n

EDITOR\u2019S NOTE<\/strong>: When I submitted this column to Ed Kemmick so he could apply his editing prowess, he replied that he paid an entirely different, and much lower, rate for the Gazette. What the heck? Did they like his City Lights columns about the sage<\/a> living in a cave under the Rims all that much? Or is there no standard rate? What are you paying?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When legendary Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko encountered a reader who didn\u2019t like his latest column, he would reach into his pocket for a quarter. \u201cHere\u2019s your money back,\u201d Royko would say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":20747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3864],"tags":[6578,60],"class_list":["post-20745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-atlantic","tag-billings-gazette","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20745"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20748,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20745\/revisions\/20748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}