A former daily editor turned newspaper consultant has predicted more daily-to-weekly frequency changes in 2014.
More than ten daily titles have moved to weekly publication over the past five years including the Birmingham Post, the Exeter Express & Echo, the Lincolnshire Echo, the Halifax Courier and the Peterborough Telegraph.
Now Peter Sands, who edited the Northern Echo in the 1990s before setting up a successful consultancy business, has said it is “certain” that more daily titles will make the switch in the next 12 months.
In a wide-ranging preview of what the year 2014 may hold for the industry, he also predicts that more football clubs and other businesses may try to charge journalists for access.
Wrote Peter: “There are more than 30 daily titles selling under 20,000 copies a day, many losing sale by 10 per cent. How long can that be sustained?
“If one thing is certain in 2014, it is that more titles will become weekly or bi-weekly.”
Peter also predicted that Newcastle United FC’s recent attempt to float the idea of charging journalists for access to players would be copied elsewhere.
“Newcastle are asking the killer questions. What value do the papers bring to the club’s business? Who needs who most?” he wrote.
“I don’t expect Newcastle to be the only club to do this. And how long before other businesses ask themselves the same questions?”
Peter’s piece, which was written for In Publishing magazine, can be viewed in full via his blog.
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A staggering prediction. If I tell you that more people in the newspaper industry will lose their jobs, does that mean I am qualified to become a consultant? Sheesh!
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I agree with Peter. A number of regional dailies would be better sustained as weeklies.
I hope lessons have been learnt from the Northcliffe and Johnston Press daily-to-weekly conversions. Lots of mistakes were made by both publishers but could be easily avoided with proper planning and consideration.
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Consultancy :
Borrow watch from client.
Tell client the current time and that in exactly 24 hours it well be the same time again.
Leave with watch.
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If you read Peter’s piece it is well argued and thought-provoking.
Even more thought-provoking/hilarious is the fact one industry ‘luminary’ he quotes suggests Editors need to use analytics more because “if no-one is reading your story online, it’s a stretch to believe they are lapping it up in print”. Errr, sorry, plain wrong and completely missing the need for intelligent publishers to differentiate content across platforms because users demand different experiences from different media. Sensible publishers are not damaging the core print brands at all costs in a headlong rush for digital hits but are appreciating these brands still have a tremendous heritage and value and can be used as a platform/marketing tool to push readers to experience differentiated content online.
Anyhow, this particular sect are clearly going to ignore such a strategy…so I look forward to seeing a screen grab from You Porn on the front of the Hull Daily Mail soon. Now that WILL be popular!
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Football club line is an interesting one.
Why shouldn’t clubs communicate directly with fans? The channels are there to do so. Fans like it.
Yes there is the point about local newspapers holding clubs to account. But apart from significant campaigns to ‘save the club’ and such like (a lot of which ends up towards the front of the paper), aren’t sports pages filled with transfer tattle, match reports and nostalgia pieces? With declining circulations and influence of papers, how much benefit is there to a club to continue the status quo and not explore other options?
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Perhaps this is heresy about charging journalists for access, but why should newspapers have a divine right to get their raw material for nothing? Journalists, after all, are working for commercial organisations whose sole aim is to maximise profits for shareholders. Heinz have to pay for the beans and the tin they put on the shelves, car firms have to pay for their parts etc, so perhaps newspapers should pay.
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I’m not entirely disagreeing with Obsererver but I remember when Newspapers were the best method of free publicity for clubs. Having said that if the greedy proprieters of the day had thought about it they may have tried to charge the clubs!
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While I, unfortunately, agree with Peter’s predictions I don’t necessarily agree with his rationale behind the switch.
A cursory look at the performance of some of the titles recently switched to weekly hardly bare out the argument that switching from daily is a solution to sales decline.
Exeter seems to have dropped from around 21,000 to 19,749 from the first to the second six month period. That’s a drop of six per cent in just six months!
Likewise in Lincoln sales have dropped from around 22,500 to 20,660 between the two ABC periods. That’s an 8% drop in six months.
Far from showing that a switch to weekly is a method of sustaining sales it appears to have had the opposite effect. It may be that a “new weekly” give a temporary bump in sales numbers (though for one day rather than across a week) but if the sales decline is even quicker it seems to me that it is no solution at all.
And where do you go after dropping below 10,000 when you are a weekly??
For the likes of Exeter a 6% decline every six months represents a fall of more than 2000 copies a year. At that rate it would be selling less than 10,000 a week in FIVE years.
I’m afraid, contrary to some of the comments here, the switch to weekly has far from proven to be a saviour for newspapers. Instead it could be argued the local paper is less visible, less relevant and less influential in its patch.
I don’t wish to criticise the many hard-working and talented journalists and editors that are still doing their best in very difficult circumstances but I fear history will judge the move to weekly publishing as the death rattle for many newspapers.
Why don’t we all just recognise these moves for what they are – an attempt to drive down costs and milk the last vestiges of profit from the cash cow while the massive media companies that own them rush headlong to daily updated websites with one journalist “trawling” the net for copy written by others…..come on down Mr Montgomery.
With any luck the great British public will recognise what has been lost and a new breed of start-up, locally owned newspapers with low but sustainable profit margins will rise from the ashes.
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