Guess who's back
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Douglas Fraser has returned with a new BBC blog now that he's Business and Economy editor at the Beeb.
An interesting first post by the ex-Herald man about the future of the newspaper industry in the economic downturn.
Fraser reports the falling circulations in almost all papers, with the Financial Times being one of the few increasing circulation for obvious reasons.
The Sunday Herald has fallen by 14.75%, the Herald has fallen by 8% as has the Scotsman on Sunday with the Scotsman falling by 9.4%
Newspapers are in the past though, aren't they? I'm surprised they've lasted this long. After all what is the need of them now that all news can be accessed for free online and with mobile devices proving faster and faster at providing an Internet connection it's now quite possible to read the news on the bus or train for free.
With the Scotsman at under 50,000 readers and the Herald at 63,000 these 'quality nationals' are looking more and more like Edinburgh and Glasgow papers respectively.
And then there's the Google problem; just why would a company advertise with a newspaper with a falling circulation and bluntly advertise to a 'demographic' that you don't know exists when you can expertly target the whole country with Adwords.
Google's system means that advertisers only pay for people who click on their links from Google and supporting sites meaning they only pay for people who are actually interested in their product.
It's the most efficient system advertising has ever seen and something newspapers have never managed to match.
Papers seem to miss the point that it's not enough to have an online presence, if you want to generate comparable advertising revenue then you need to offer an alternative way of targeting advertising or simply affiliate with a current PPC system, neither of which seems hugely promising for the future of the Newspaper Industry as a whole.
My bet is that within 7 years the Herald and Scotsman will merge and be a genuinely national paper for at least a few years.
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4 comments:
Dear Yayo:
Blame my attorney background and education if you wish, but I've never could resist to read the smaller type, and when I went through the new Herald-Talk Terms&Conditions we risk to breach I found something really depressing. It somehow can explain what is happening to the Scottish press.
Besides it the rest of the "upgrade" is an exercise in futility, because how can newspapers boasting to be "Scotland's award winning independent newspaper" (Sunday Herald), or "Scotland's top selling evening paper" (Evening Times), or "Scotland's leading quality newspaper" (The Herald)say?:
LAW
These Conditions of Use shall be construed in accordance with English law. If there is any dispute arising out of these Conditions or use of the Message Board, the English Courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction.
Newspapers have something of an interesting history in this country. Andrew Marr's excellent book 'My trade' gives a great account of this.
One of his main points is that, traditionally, people in the UK have bought papers in much greater numbers than the rest of the continent.
Given that we regularly hear about the growing convergence of Western economies and thus tastes (the Starbucks effect) could a fall in newspaper sales be part of this?
However obviously the internet and free papers are the main reasons for the fall. Although I still buy papers sometimes the bulk of my news comes from BBC Online, online newspaper sites and, if it's there, the Metro.
Given that I'm someone who is interested in such matters this should worry newspapers: if they cannot get me to buy them then it has to be a declining industry. Indeed the bulk of people that do buy papers tend to go for the Sun, Stra, etc which isn't great for broadsheets.
Newspapers have to move with the times. That means making greater use of online tools to attract readers and advertisers. A genuinely interactive newspaper site without the usual commenting bile would be attractive to many, I suspect.
The merger point is interesting and I wonder if part of this issue is the decline of people identifying with a particular political ideology. Traditionally whilst there was an east-west split there was also a left-right split between the Herald and Scotsman. Perhaps the decline in this means that less people know what each paper is for?
Clearly the internet has many advantages over the traditional press, but I still prefer reading newspapers rather than stuff onscreen, and of course the electronic book has made little impact on the market for paper books.
I recall in my younger days people predicting the death of newspapers in favour of TV, but of course despite the advance of the latter the former has continued to flourish, albeit in different ways.
Of course, the internet has impacted on newspapers, and the press will no doubt have to change to accomodate this (as it's already done to an extent), but I suspect reports of its imminent death are exaggerated!
IoC, I see that the Herald has dumped its article comments function in favour of a dedicated and MODERATED comment section, which should presumably be an improvement on the old methodology, but it certainly looks more cumbersome to use.
Stuart,
An excellent point about TV - there is often a tendency to declare that 'the king is dead' even if history tells us otherwise.
I do think that the ultimate decline of newspapers is still years and year away, and not in my lifetime (hopefully at least another 50 years on current projections...).
Certainly people of a given age (say 45 upwards) still want to buy papers as a point of habit and I would expect will continue to do so. But even those under that age still buy papers, even if only for sport, etc.
If we reach a time where everyone has a form of advanced mobile phone/laptop with them at all times then perhaps we will see the triumph of online media. But until then (and even after that) habit is a hard thing to break.
Re. the Herald. That would be a step in the right direction but as you say it's not without its faults.
I would personally love to see columnists (for instance) have debates over their articles with the public (like blogging, but with bigger numbers) but sadly we wall know how debates as things stand would currently end up.
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