The decline in newspapers: MM case studies

The New Day

1) What was the New Day trying to achieve?

New Day were trying to buck the trend over the ever downward newspaper sales. The New Day published with the intention of meeting the needs of those who could not find what they wanted on the regular newsstands.  

2) List the key statistics on the first page: how many people buy newspapers in the UK? How has this declined in the last year?

• About 6 million people buy a newspaper in Britain every day, Which is down even further from 2015, last year it was reported that it may as well have been a recession year for the newspaper industry. Weekly circulation fell 7% and weekend circulation fell 4%. Both showing the greatest declines since 2010.  
• Over 1 million people have stopped buying a newspaper in the past two years 
• The New Day intended to produce something that readers could digest within 30 minutes

3) What audience were the New Day trying to attract?

The newspaper was designed to appeal to both males and females and those of the 35 - 55 year old age bracket. New Day wanted to cater for their modern lifestyles and modern approach  to receiving the news being through online means nowadays.

4) Why do you think the New Day failed so spectacularly? There are several possible reasons listed in the article but do develop your own opinion here as well.

The newspaper failed for a variety of reasons in my opinion, one being that the newspaper was introduced into a already heavily failing newspaper industry which would make you question how successful it can actually be. As it says in the article, in the quote from Joe Rundle, head of trading at ETX Capital:

"In a world where print is declining there was never a place for another title that had no real USP. It is ill conceived, badly executed and completely foolish - it's hard to fathom what Trinity Mirror was trying to achieve".  


I also think that the newspaper failed so spectacularly because of the price hike that they had from charging 25p for two weeks after launch to 50p thereafter. This is because I wouldn't and I do not see why others would either pay such money for news that you can almost definitely find elsewhere. This is due to the heaviness of republication in the modern world, we often hear in the news something reported to us by Sky news but sometimes they say "According to BBC News....".  Sky therefore republished what the BBC found and broke first potentially.  

A third reason, why New Day failed was probably because from what I've read in the article they did not have a concretely set. They say in the article that they are targeting a 35- 55 year old age bracket of both women and men but as it says a few of the editions published were brought to question whether they were actually targeted at such an age bracket. People believed that the actual audience was younger for example young women with children.      

Website Reference:
http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/newspapers-fact-sheet/


 The Guardian

1) List the key statistics on page 10: How many unique digital browsers used the Guardian website in June 2016? What are The Guardian's latest print sales figures? How does this compare to the Telegraph? In terms of finances, how much did the Guardian lose in 2015? 

• Guardian - Third most read website: 120m unique digital browsers, around 9m browsers daily of which approx only a third are from UK.
• Latest print sales figures show the Guardian to have a circulation of only 161,000 
• Guardian print figures well behind telegraph with 472,000
• In 2015, despite efficient cost reductions Guardian lost around £70m  

2) What has been The Guardian's strategy for reversing this decline?

Move themselves online in the majority and strengthen the backbones of The Guardian company in Australia and USA.  There was also The Guardian's ability to cover major stories live, shaping the way Guardian used on mobile devices. There strategy to reverse the decline or help themselves to survive was by being consistently innovative. For example, through live blogging and and comments sections of articles being more heavily used.  

3) What global event did The Guardian's digital coverage win awards for?

Guardian coverage of the Paris attacks won awards from the Society of Editors it got Website of the Year. The citation read: the winner’s site offers a comprehensive news service and boasts consistent innovation. It is notable for its superb live blogging, its long reads,the comment section and, in particular, fantastic coverage of the Paris shootings.

4) In your opinion, will the global website strategy be enough to save The Guardian?

It might be... it depends how The Guardian use the interest that the global website gets to their advantage. With the interest they are getting they need to innovate themselves and not just sit on their hands because they are getting a decent level of interest from readers. If they do not utilize the interest they are getting they will lose the readership that they have to other websites,which is not hard as most if not all previously print based newspaper conglomerates are now online or partially online. For readers to be able to access all the different editions of the paper is good as they can be informed of things in other countries but The Guardian need to be innovative in the content that they publish, they need to ensure that they stay clear of republished content from other news conglomerates.