With the dissemination of easily accessible real time information on a second for second basis, one may be forgiven for considering the news in the morning papers as outdated. Weekly Newspapers have to find more innovative ways to improve the bottom line by enticing readers (loyal and potential) to not only purchase their paper copy of the morning news, but to choose their paper over that of their competitors. It is not surprising then that in keeping with the digital age many publications have increased their scope and fan base with a successful move onto the internet. Along with their morning papers, readers can regularly check into the website of their favourite publication for real time updates - not only in articles but through blogs and tweets too.
Let’s take the British national daily newspaper the Guardian for example. So successful is their news website that the Guardian is ranked among the top 5 newspaper sites in the world. Rising at around 60-70% a year the total traffic is around 67m unique browsers a month with a daily average of 4m browsers on its network of sites. Compared to their competitors, the Guardian was well ahead of the curve in terms of embracing the internet. Starting in 1995 they had already started to experiment with live-blogging and exploratory graphics. By 2012 they were putting up around 400 pieces of content every 24 hours. This dedicated approach saw their website receive more hits than The Sun (Britain’s most successful newspaper) and The Daily Telegraph (Britain’s most successful broadsheet) put together. However as Alain De Botton rightfully said in his TED lecture ‘a kinder, gentler philosophy of success’ - where we have success in one area of life, another area is sure to miss out.
Albeit being one of the most successful online newspapers globally, the Guardians print circulation is drastically failing. With only the Independent having worse newspaper sales than the Guardian, it has never been the most successful newspaper on the newsstand. However with circulation down almost 40% in the last 5 years, the Guardian Media group is haemorrhaging cash. According to the economist, for three years running, the Guardian has been losing £100,000 a day. Even cut backs of £26m in 2010/2011 found the Guardian losing £38m for that fiscal year, with 2011/2012 on track for a repeat performance. As for generating more attractive gross revenues perhaps it’s time for the Guardian to follow suit of their competitors and place their online content behind a paywall. Their weekly newspapers however are in desperate need of an innovative life line.
The evolution of the digital age appears to be bringing the dawn of a new era - an era where the morning newspaper is outdated and obsolete. Newspaper Houses have to come up with new and innovative ways of maintaining their reader base. Upon acquiring The Independent, the Russian Billionaire Alexander Lebedev introduced a more concise cheaper version of the Newspaper called I. Initial movements suggest this is starting to acquire traction. At the other end of the spectrum, The Evening Standard felt the only way it could retain or increase its circulation was to give the newspaper away for free leveraging critical mass to encourage, and retain, revenue from advertising streams. Whether these ideas will work is to be seen. Even if weekly newspapers appear to be petering out, they are not going down without with a fight.
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