The Wall Street Journal is raising its weekday newsstand price next month from $1 to $1.50, the newspaper’s parent company, Dow Jones & Co., said Thursday.
Prices for subscriptions, which make up the bulk of the Journal’s circulation, will remain unchanged, a company spokesman said, confirming an article that appeared Thursday in The New York Times.
Single-copy sales make up about 6.6 percent of the Journal’s total paid circulation. The price increase goes into effect July
16. The Journal’s Saturday edition will continue to cost $1.50 on newsstands.
The increase in the single copy rate was the first since April 2001. Since then, newspaper advertising has slumped and costs for newsprint have risen.
The Journal raised its home delivery price last year, which had “minimal impact” on renewal rates, the Journal’s publisher, Gordon Crovitz, said in a statement.
Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate News Corp. has offered to buy Dow Jones for $5 billion, but Murdoch is still in talks with Dow Jones’ controlling shareholders, the Bancroft family, over their concerns about preserving the editorial independence of the Journal.