The key to increasing sales is keeping your news local.

That’s the view of Swindon Advertiser editor Dave King – in charge at the only daily paper in the UK to record a sales boost in the latest ABC figures.

But Dave is quick to divert praise to his predecessor Mark Waldron who quit the Wiltshire title to take over at The News, in Portsmouth, last autumn.

Dave said: “I can’t really take credit for that as I only came here in October.

“It’s a bit like I’m the substitute who came in the 75th minute and kept a clean sheet.

“Mark has to take a lot of the credit for that and the team I inherited from him.

“Every editor is looking for the secret recipe to buck circulation and push it up.

“The secret is to come up with a formula that works for you. What works in Swindon might not work elsewhere.

“In terms of the paper, what I’ve been trying to do is bring it right back to its roots. I know it sounds cheesy but community news which affects readers in this area.

“With so much news around we’ve got to do something that people identify with.”

In the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation figures, published last week, the Swindon Advertiser showed a 0.4 per cent sales increase for the second half of 2007 compared with the same period in 2006.

This bucked the general trend of a downturn in the market with some titles registering circulation drops of more than ten per cent.

Dave admits that, now the Advertiser comes out in the morning, the paper’s website acts as almost a second edition.

He said they had adopted a 24/7 policy to covering news online.

“Our internet figures have been stunning in terms of the level of traffic,” he added. “We are now topping close to 5m page impressions for the month. A year ago we were just short of 3m.”

Comments

Diarmuid O’Donovan (06/03/2008 15:29:47)
Very Interestiing

SATYANARAYAN MOHAPATRA (08/03/2008 16:41:08)
I think the above statement is so far correct. As much the people coincides with the news, they prefer to read that paper. From among some 5 to 6 papers in Orissa; I see the one who put forth regional language in a masterly way wins the race. so is the case for national papers with regional versions. Thanks to Tamlyn Jones for this bit of good news.