OCCASIONALLY an editor has to break bad news, and the bad news is that your weekend Morning Star will rise in price from next weekend by 10p, to £1.80, while the price of the online edition will rise for the first time since its launch seven years ago, by 10 per cent from May 6 (online subscribers will be written to directly before this happens).
We’re well aware that costs have risen steeply for readers through the inflationary crisis of the last couple of years, driven above all by corporate profiteering: and that slowing inflation doesn’t mean prices are falling.
But if we’re all feeling the hit, so is your paper — our own costs have risen too, for paper, printing, distribution and wages.
Raising the price of a product isn’t a survival strategy: if we used it to try to mask falling sales income it would entrench a cycle of decline. But that isn’t the picture at the Morning Star, which has actually done well in print sales over the last six months, with a rise of about 10 per cent.
Our policy of supplying papers free to demonstrations, especially the major Palestinian solidarity demonstrations, as well as to conferences and workers’ picket lines is building recognition of the value of Britain’s only socialist daily newspaper, reflected in rising print sales as well as more union branches taking out our new bulk e-edition subscription. I’ve spoken at multiple public meetings in the last couple of weeks and have seen first-hand the commitment of our readers’ and supporters’ groups, but also the enthusiasm of new readers, subscribers and shareholders being brought in — which underlines the absolutely crucial role of GSRs in building sales and local support.
At the same time, late last year we pushed to get the Morning Star back into more shops, as the number of shops stocking it fell steeply during the pandemic and we need a wider presence on the shelves. That too you have fed into the sales rise we’ve seen.
It’s all from our lower post-pandemic base, of course, and we have a way to go before sales income is back at 2019 levels. But the price rise isn’t a response to falling income, merely the fact that our costs have risen faster than our income and these need to be met.
We’ve avoided a price increase for as long as possible, aware of its impact on readers’ budgets. For now in print we are also confining it to a 10p rise on our biggest and best-selling edition, the weekend paper, although we may need to raise weekday prices in due course. We also decided that never having raised it before it was no longer possible to avoid a rise in the price of online subscriptions.
In the last six months the world has come closer and closer to world war: Britain is involved in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, supplying weapons and diplomatic backing, it has worked to prolong the killing in Ukraine, it is ratcheting up tensions with China and committing to build more nuclear weapons and increase military spending as our public services wither.
We face social breakdown too, a crooked elite controlling the leaderships of both main Westminster parties committed to the zombie economics of neoliberalism, propping up corporate profits at the cost of working-class living standards, openly planning more privatization of the NHS and waving through council cuts that could cripple local government permanently.
Only one daily newspaper continues to fight for our planet and our class, cutting through the fog of capitalist propaganda to bring you the stories and analysis we need to change things. There’s a price to keep that paper going, and that price is rising by 10p on a weekend from May 4, but I hope you all agree it’s still worth paying.
