‘This price was set by an algorithm’: News subscribers are surprised by a new line in their renewal emails
Last December, one of our readers received a renewal email from The Wall Street Journal. Over the coming year, the email said, she would be charged $76.99 every four weeks for her print and digital subscription — $19.25 a week, or $923.88 annually.
The renewal email included one sentence in all caps: “THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA.” (Subscription prices on The Wall Street Journal’s website are a bit lower: $16.25 per week for a print/digital subscription, after a year at 40% off, or $845 a year.) The reader canceled her subscription.
You may have encountered dynamic pricing — sometimes referred to as algorithmic, personalized, or surveillance pricing — when booking a flight or buying groceries on Instacart. It’s when a company’s algorithm decides what to charge you based on your purchase history and other. behaviors. And news subscribers are increasingly noticing it when their subscriptions come up for renewal.
“Like many businesses, Dow Jones uses data to inform the marketing, positioning and pricing of certain consumer subscription products,” a Dow Jones spokesperson told me when I asked about our reader’s experience. “We do this responsibly, guided by robust governance and compliance protocols. Adherence to these protocols is actively monitored and enforced by stakeholders across the business including legal, privacy and compliance.”
Earlier this month, NJ.com subscriber Adam Lisberg got a renewal notice stating that his annual subscription price of $130 was determined by an algorithm using his personal data. NJ.com is owned by Advance Local; its website states that annual subscriptions start at $100 for basic access, while a premium subscription with various perks costs $200.
Algorithmic pricing comes to the news business — just got this renewal notice from nj.com that my $130 annual renewal cost was set personally for me. What are other people being charged?
— adamlisberg.bsky.social (@adamlisberg.bsky.social) July 13, 2026 at 8:41 AM
Lisberg’s Bluesky post caught the attention of other NJ.com subscribers. One was being charged $145. New York Times’ New Jersey reporter Tracey Tully was told her subscription would renew at $175.
Dynamic pricing isn’t illegal in the United States unless it’s deployed deceptively, discriminates against protected classes, or violates antitrust laws. Last month, consumers filed a class action lawsuit against The Washington Post for failing to disclose its use of dynamic pricing. Tim Giordano is a partner at Clarkson Law Firm, the firm behind the Post lawsuit. He said that news subscribers have the right to understand how their personal data is being used.
“Journalism has real value, and news organizations have every right to pursue a profitable business model,” Giordano said. “But individualized pricing determined by opaque AI systems using personal data, and even legally protected characteristics, is outside the bounds of fair competition and consumer protection law. This kind of AI-driven price gouging gates essential information behind a paywall that moves simply depending on who you are. It undermines public trust in one of the core pillars of democracy.”
“It signals that really vulnerable for-profit news companies are racing to the bottom trying to survive on price and subscriber retention,” said Consumer Reports investigative journalist Derek Kravitz, who helped break the story about Instacart’s AI pricing last year. (After the investigation was published, Instacart suspended the experiment.)
Several states have introduced legislation to regulate or ban dynamic pricing. New York’s Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act, which went into effect in January, requires companies to tell New York residents about their use of dynamic pricing. California, meanwhile, banned competitors from sharing “common pricing algorithms” with each other to price similar products and services.
My colleague Andrew got a renewal notice for his Wired subscription on June 29 that set his annual subscription price at $40; because Andrew lives in Brooklyn, the renewal notice included the line, “NEW YORK RESIDENTS: PLEASE NOTE THAT WE ARE REQUIRED TO INFORM YOU THAT THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA.” (New Yorker and Albany Times Union subscribers have received similar notices.) The email also mentioned that his $40 offer is below the annual rate of $80, “based on your past purchases and engagement with our products.”
News companies may disclose their potential uses of customer data for pricing in their privacy policies in a few different ways. I looked at policies from Dow Jones, Condé Nast, and Hearst. In these policies, the language generally refers to “personalized offers” and states that artificial intelligence and machine learning may be used to accomplish business objectives related to personal data collection.
Hearst, which owns the Albany Times Union, said it deploys dynamic pricing across all of its newspaper markets at renewal time. It did not disclose the retention or churn data, but that the approach “results in fair pricing for subscribers while supporting our investment in local journalism.”
“Like many newspaper publishers, for many years we’ve used a structured pricing approach based primarily on subscriber tenure and, more recently, digital engagement,” a spokesperson for Hearst said in an email. “What’s new is that New York’s law requires us to use specific language to describe this pricing practice.”
Have you been told that your news subscription price was determined by an algorithm using your personal data? Nieman Lab wants to hear from you.