SALT LAKE CITY — With October the month for the annual subscription drive for the Intermountain Catholic, pastors and parish administrators are pressed to encourage Intermountain Catholic readers in their parishes to reimburse the parish for the price of their subscriptions. Each parish is responsible to pay for a given number of Intermountain Catholic subscriptions. If parishioner/subscribers don’t reimburse the parish for their annual $25.00 subscriptions, the parishes must make up the cost. Subscribers who send their subscription renewals directly to the Intermountain Catholic offices, are credited back to their parishes. At a recent meeting of the Intermountain Catholic Board of Advisors, one board member, when she heard how much it costs the Intermountain Catholic to print each issue, said, "That’s less than a latte!" The breakdown of costs for each individual issue of the newspaper is as follows: • Cost of printing – .11 • Cost of mailing service – .05 (preparing the paper for mailing with labels and bar codes) • Cost of postage – .17 (second class, bulk mailing) • Cost of wire service – .02 (Catholic News Service) Total definable costs: .35 per issue Not included in this list are the cost of staff salaries (the Intermountain Catholic currently has a full time staff of six); mileage expenditures – (this differs radically from one issue to the next); and expenses attached with professional conventions, membership fees, external advertising costs, and equipment expenses. Dividing your $25 subscription fee by the 47 issues of the newspaper published yearly, your cost per issue is about 53 cents. Certainly less than a latte. "The Intermountain Catholic is like your favorite local grocery store," board members, Cece Holt and Mary Nickles, said to their parishes and other parishes they spoke at this month. "It’s convenient, friendly, and they know you. They can help find what you want and what you need. Plus, they let you know what’s going on in your neighborhood and your community. That kind of store is usually in business – not to make big bucks, but because they love what they do, and love the people they serve. That is the Intermountain Catholic. Nearly 15,000 issues of the Intermountain Catholic go out each week and more than 1,000 copies of Utah Católico go out each month, reaching corners of Utah to which most of us never get. Chances are, if you don’t subscribe to the Intermountain Catholic, you’ve been grabbing one your parish distributes. The parish pays for those, so you know who ends up really paying. Your subscriptions also pay for the award winning web site, "iCatholic.org," which streams video of Mass from the Cathedral of the Madeleine and other diocesan events so you can view them on-demand. "The Intermountain Catholic" is really more than a newspaper," Bishop Wester, our publisher, has said. "It is a valuable tool for evangelization and the faith formation of the diocese. It helps us make responsible decisions, and it reminds us weekly what we as Catholics believe. It also educates us on the broader issues: ethics and our mission as church." Our plea to you today is to share the strength of the Catholic Church in Utah by subscribing to the Intermountain Catholic. At $25 a year, that’s a little more than 50 cents an issue. That’s quite a bargain at the local store, don’t you think? The Intermountain Catholic Board of Advisors and Arthur Heredia, business manager for the Intermountain Catholic, contributed to this article.
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