Newspapers offer page after page of news and information but cost less than a coffee

The huge expansion of the ‘wireless’ in the 1920s meant that people quickly heard news on the radio, well before they read it in a newspaper.

Two hundred years before that, when newspapers were in their own period of rapid expansion, news had to travel by boat. America’s Declaration of Independence happened on July 4 1776, but it was August before reports reached Europe.

Even a century after that, when telegraphs allowed news to travel fast, the average person did not read about it until the next day, after it had been written up by a journalist, then placed on a page by a printer, before the newspapers were sent by trains or horse and carriage to shops.

After the Second World War TV made newspapers seem even more old fashioned, particularly in the 1960s when live colour images were beamed by Satellite across the Atlantic.

But newspapers not only survived all this, their circulations rose and rose. Their offering got better and better.

As recently as the 1980s, it was not unusual for a daily newspaper to be fewer than 30 pages, with all pictures black and white. Now most images are colour and newspapers almost always have more than 40 pages, and sometimes 100+.

One thing has begun to impact on paper sales, however.

Free internet news (such as the News Letter website) means the younger generation is used to having its news for free. But producing a quality newspaper is expensive.

This is not sustainable, particularly as printing costs rise. One day young people will see that good news is not free.

Most newspapers are having to raise their cover price, as we are doing today. This is regrettable but necessary. Your daily edition of the News Letter is still much cheaper than a coffee in a major cafe chain, but much more substantial.

And the price is cheaper still for our readers who take out a bargain subscription (see page 5 for details).