3 April—Yesterday’s mail contained something I’ve been expecting for some time but not looking forward to. It’s my quarterly subscription renewal from the Republican-American with a 21 percent increase in the price. $74.75 a quarter now, or $299 for a whole year, up from $61.75 a quarter or $247 for the year. That’s a dollar a week increase. Not much to you, a lot to me.

The subscriber is notified that “advance payment is offered as a convenience to our readers” but warned that “changes in subscription rates will affect expiration dates.” Come on. That’s not very nice, is it? So, since there’s no discount or other advantage to an annual subscription over a quarterly one, why should anybody commit to a full year?

And I couldn’t even find a warning or notice of the price increase anywhere in the daily or Sunday papers. Maybe I just didn’t look hard enough? Come to think of it, would it be legal to increase the cost and reduce the subscription length without notifying the subscribers—not just beforehand, but at all?

No matter, because that’s the way it’s been done for as long as I can remember. But my Quicken-enhanced memory goes back only to the turn of the century, when a quarterly subscription went for a mere $48.23. In 2004 that was raised eight percent to $52.00. Thirteen years later, in 2017, a quarter went up 18 percent to $61.75, and that has prevailed until now.

Given the internet, of course, print newspapers are molting readers and advertisers. As of last October, the Republican-American had only about 26,000 paid subscribers, the Sunday Republican about 30,000.

I can’t speak to revenue from advertising, but the presumed high seven figures derived from subscriptions doesn’t seem a particularly attractive base, especially since the Pape family’s printing business is no longer there to prop up the newspaper when necessary. (Rumors about Eastern Color Printing supporting American-Republican Inc. abounded in the old days. I never bothered to verify them. But I’m not a reporter.)

We know that we’re paying more while getting considerably less for our money. So why should the Republican-American be any different from virtually every other supplier of retail goods? Because, after all is said and done, newspapers and magazines are retail goods.

A half-gallon of ice cream now contains 48 ounces rather than 64; a half-gallon of orange juice contains 52 ounces rather than 64; a pound of canned dog food is now 12 or 13 ounces. And that’s only food. Don’t forget Charmin. Manufacturers and retailers have price points to consider—how much shoppers are willing to pay—and adjust size to meet that price point.

Evidently, American-Republican Inc. also is considering price point. Because we’re getting a lot less in the Republican-American than we should be getting. The daily and Sunday editions are puny zombified versions of what they used to be, what the readers should be but aren’t getting now. Everything but some state political news and a paucity of local news and local fluff and lots of de rigueur sports comes off the wires. But there’s so little of just about everything. So little of everything.

Republican-American readers can get most of the national and world news, local news, and features including columnists, puzzles, and comics, free (or, these days, relatively inexpensively) on the internet. So why do we continue to pay more for less in the local rag?

Well, truth be told, I have three reasons. First, already getting most of my national and international news and comment from the internet, I’m just too lazy to fiddle with over a dozen more websites to get comics. Next, I prefer to read a paper rather than a screen at breakfast, even though the paper no longer takes a continental (juice-coffee-toast) breakfast to read.

Last but by no means least, I value local ownership of newspapers. The Republican-American may have lost a lot of its substance in the last few decades, but it’s still a damn sight more substantial than any—yes, any—of the chain-owned and dissipated rags that are sold around here.

But will subscribers be getting any more from the Republican-American now that the Republican-American is getting more from us? And why aren’t we offered an attractive discount for paying a full year in advance—in addition, of course, to a guaranty that expiration dates of prepaid subscriptions won’t be affected by price hikes? Fair is fair.

And when will somebody wake up the copy editors?