We mentioned briefly last week that in these times of low inflation, the Boston Standard has decided to buck the trend with an unannounced price rise for its redesigned paper of 15 pence a week – that’s 30%.
It is the fashion these days for newspaper rises to be introduced without warning – as a pre-announcement might cause people to cancel their subscription.
In fact, so well-concealed was the rise, that one of our local newsagents was completely unaware of it, and continued selling the paper for 50 pence until someone tipped him the wink.
However, the newspaper is using the re-launch and the price hike to promote a subscription scheme which will “lower” the price to 37 pence.
Editor Stephen Stray told Boston Eye: “The Boston Standard has previously gone a considerable length of time without a cover price increase, and during a period which last year saw printing costs rise substantially.
“With our fantastic subscription offer readers can in fact enjoy the Boston Standard for just 37p, which is exceptional value.
“As well as bringing in a fresh and bright redesign, the team have worked hard to offer great new content, much of which came about from reader feedback. For example, we now offer daily coverage from Boston Magistrates' Court, jobs listings from the Jobcentre, greater coverage from surrounding villages in our new neighbourhood section, and improved entertainment and sports sections, to name just a few.
 "We will continue to build on this moving forward and are, as always, keen to hear feedback from our readers."
Some early feedback from this reader is that the redesign seems to be capitalising on an apparent world surplus of red ink – daubed by the gallon across the pages, which, incidentally have been created by a group of Spanish design consultants.
Neither are the papers sub-edited locally - but at "regional hubs” … in our case most likely in Peterborough, alongside some of the group’s newspapers from Sussex, of all places.
“We also feel that in terms of value for money it would be nice to have more news – rather than four pages promoting a “Tiny Tots” contest and another two trumpeting the Standard Sports Awards.
Checking back on the Standard’s pricing history, we reported in February last year a 10% increase in the cover price to 50p, whilst the year before that the price rose from 42p to 45p.
And whilst the editor is following the party line, his boss of bosses - Johnston Press chief executive Ashley Highfield  - is openly cynical in his explanation of a deliberate strategy of  increasing prices.
The new look for the paper is one of  five different design templates imposed across the 170 paid-for daily and weekly newspapers in the group, and aims to reduce production costs –  and not the thoughtful gift to  readers that it is being sold as.
Highfield says: “The intention was to encourage people to take out subscriptions covering both print and online for less than they pay for the paper. We’re looking at making our newspapers a better proposition by investing in them and being able to put the cover prices up. That’s not something that our readers are going to rejoice about but they do understand that the papers need to be charged at a price that’s value for money.
“I think the future for our business is to drive subscription levels. So if you take something like the Boston Standard, where we’re putting the price up, we’re actually holding the subscription level down at 37p, which is considerably lower than the price before we even put the price up. What we’re trying to do is move people to a subscription where they’ll get the paper, the iPad app, the website, everything in one bundle for considerably less than the cover price of the paper.”
Boston Eye has sympathy with the staff at the Standard - who are clearly trying their best  to get on with the job.
But the fact is that their parent company is saddled with hundreds of millions in debt, and trying to milk readers as cash cows to get the business back on its feet. The group has closed newspapers, and turned dailies into weeklies in pursuit of profit, and it is not unreasonable to believe that if the Standard fails to cut the mustard it might also be sacrificed.
Incidentally, we tried to subscribe – both because we think that local papers are important, and in our case, we need to see one every week without breaking the bank.
So on Friday we tried to take out a subscription.
A link from the Standard’s website page gave an offer code, but when we submitted it, were told that it no longer existed, and to proceed without using it. We did this, and completed all the details - which included our bank account details.
After that, we were asked to select the newspaper we wished to subscribe to,  and were then taken to a page which asked for the information  - including bank details - all over again. At this stage we abandoned the process, for fear that we might end up with two subscriptions rather than just one – although we suspect that nothing will happen at all.
As a courtesy, we e-mailed the Editor to tell him of the problem – but the message was rejected.
We sent it again – with the same result.
Aside from all this trouble, we are not sure that people who are currently happy to hand over a couple of coins to their newsagent for a local paper, will be keen to stump up £14.30 for a six month subscription (that’s 15% off) or £24.96 for 52 weeks.
Not only that, but the paper manages to turn it into a saving of “over 40%” by relating the saving to the “pre-increase levels.”
Confused?
We think that you’re meant to be!

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