Guardian to raise weekday price to £1.20

The price of the print edition of the Guardian will rise after this weekend, the weekday Guardian going up 20p to £1.20 and the Saturday edition going up 10p to £2.10.

The price rise makes the Guardian the most expensive weekday and Saturday quality national, with the exception of the consistently more expensive Financial Times. Weekday rivals the Telegraph, the Independent and the Times all cost £1, with the Saturday editions costing £1.90, £1.60 and £1.50 respectively.

The Guardian has raised the price of the print edition in September twice in the past four years, up to 80p in 2007 and to £1 in 2009.

Chris Lawson, content, sales and marketing director for Guardian publisher Guardian News & Media said: "The Guardian is a high-quality product and we believe this is the right price point for our newspaper at this time.

"The price increase will enable us to continue to invest in the kind of ground-breaking investigative journalism that, in 2011, has seen us win newspaper of the year and drive increases in sales and readership."

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation report for last month, the Guardian's print sales fell 10.1 per cent year-on-year to 241,287 and the Observer fell 10.9 per cent to 274,304. The significant falls were due in part to GNM's decision to scrap international sales of the titles.

The print edition is due to take a back seat under the Guardian's new digital-first strategy, announced by parent company Guardian Media Group (GMG) in June. The strategy will see the newspaper reduced in size and focused on analysis and comment as opposed to news.

Alongside its strategy announcement, GMG revealed that it had lost £33 million over the 2010/2011 financial year. Under the new strategy, the company will attempt to double digital revenues to £91 million by 2016 and save £25 million over the same period.

Overall turnover for the group was down £23 million to £221 million, with around £40 million of that coming from digital.

Guardian News & Media confirmed that the switch to a digital-first strategy would involve 'significant' job cuts from the company, which employs 630 among a total staff of 1,500.

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