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Updated, 20.59
TWO REGIONAL NEWSPAPERS were the only printed news publications to increase sales in the first six months of 2011.
The Audit Bureau of Circulation released figures which the Press Gazette says show that the Roscommon Herald and the Enniscorthy Guardian have increased their sales by 9.3 per cent (to 8,640) and 5.6 per cent (to 7,277) respectively.
The Roscommon Herald is owned by Thomas Crosbie Holdings and the Enniscorthy Guardian is owned by Independent News and Media (INM).
INM reported today that its operating profit had fallen by €2.3m in the first half of 2011. It reported to shareholders that group revenue had fallen 12.3 per cent. Advertising revenues were “subdued”, its figures found, and operating costs are to be “aggresssively managed”, with the company already managing to reduce them by €6.6m.
INM chief Gavin O’Reilly said the results came in “remarkably tough advertising and consumer markets”. The report also said:
As part of the Group’s focus on eliminating loss-making activities, the Irish Daily Star Sunday, in which INM was a 50% shareholder, and the Sunday Tribune, in which INM was a 29.9% shareholder, ceased publication in January and February 2011 respectively.
The tough market conditions have clearly had a similar effect on other titles in Ireland. All other papers (excluding freesheets) dropped circulation from January to June, with the Cork Evening Echo (10.2 per cent) seeing the worst daily drop; the Sunday World (7.6 per cent), Sunday Business Post (3.6 per cent) and Sunday Independent (3.6 per cent) seeing the worst decreases for Sunday titles; and the Leinster Leader experiencing the worst decrease (19.8 per cent) of all publications.
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On-line reading is slowly overtaking traditional print delivery.
The papers would need to find a way to charge for online services quickly! Micro payments perhaps. Some of the newspaper apps are a rip off. If you want to charge big amounts of money for online content you need to make it interactive to make people come back for more. I’d be interested to see a correlation between the journals readership figures and that of the papers you quote each day!
There were newspapers that increased sales? Wow.
I suppose local news relies more on being local than on being news, so it’s slightly less hindered by the fact that everyone’s already read the news as it happened on the internet. Though local websites/forums/Facebook groups could change that. I guess it depends on whether someone is locally active, web-savvy and bothered.
The problem is that the newsrooms of most print newspapers don’t have staff with the right skills to make an impact online. They’re caught in a trap with no money to hire talented young digital journalists and no hope of keeping their brand alive otherwise.
And by ‘digital journalists’ I don’t mean someone who just uses Twitter, but who can use a wide range of visual and interactive media techniques to tell a story. They’re few and far between in the news industry. The Guardian are by far the best local example, they’ve a solid digital team.
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