LAST August I outlined the reasons why the Morning Star introduced a metered paywall, meaning readers get access to 20 articles a month free but are prompted to buy an online subscription from just £4.99 a month for unlimited access.

Supporters of this newspaper are well aware of our hand-to-mouth existence, with many of you donating each month to the £18,000 Fighting Fund appeal that we need just to make ends meet.

Newspapers across the industry face enormous pressure as readers switch to online sources of information and the circulation of most titles has plummeted over recent years. While the Morning Star has bucked that trend, increasing print sales in 2015-16 and since then maintaining them, it’s undoubtedly true that changing consumer habits has made the increase in circulation we all want to see very difficult.

At the same time costs keep rising. In August I pointed out that our costs had risen by around £1,000 a week in less than a year because of rising paper prices and distribution costs.

As we were only just keeping afloat to begin with we were not in a position to meet those costs. For over a year the People’s Press Printing Society’s management committee has been forced to look carefully at raising the price of the paper to handle our rising costs.

We’ve been deeply reluctant to do so, and have avoided this step for as long as possible, but financial pressures unfortunately now give us no choice and the finance and review committee has authorised an increase in the weekday price to £1.20 from May 6 (the larger weekend paper will stay at its current £1.50 price). This is the first increase in our weekday price since 2012.

We know that the Morning Star is already an expensive product for its size and that readers feeling the pinch as austerity hits household budgets will not welcome this news. But recent months have been difficult and we feel we cannot responsibly delay the decision any further without risking the paper’s future.

While e-edition sales have continued steadily, we have not seen the significant growth we would have needed to avoid a rise in the print price.

Our benchmark 20 free articles is very generous by other papers’ standards, and we are, again reluctantly, reducing this to 10 per month from May 1 before an online subscription is required to view more as we know from our web statistics that the paper is read by far greater numbers online than it is in print and we do need regular online readers to contribute more to the pot if we are to survive and hopefully expand and improve our online presence.

That project is ongoing and recent moves have included the addition of readers’ letters to our website while a social media team has been set up to push our unique socialist daily message further.

While times are hard, the need for our Morning Star is greater than ever and I hope readers understand the reason for these difficult decisions.

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