Thursday, August 24, 2006
The big strategic questions for evening papers
This week's Press Gazette survey of evening newspapers’ print times and number of editions triggered a few questions regarding the strategic issues facing them all.
- What do readers want from the news section of an evening paper now? Local news? Today’s local news? The national news of the day? (maybe on the paper’s website as text, a downloadable click-and-print PDF like The Guardian’s G24 and/or a podcast?)
- How many people have time for an evening paper now? If so, when and in what form? A key part of the answer for evenings has to be finding out the answers and working out how to fit into readers’ lives rather than keep asking them to go out of their way in their daily (mainly working) lives to buy something they may not have time for then, or later, sometimes maybe just in that form. Giving willing consumers what they want and how they want it is key to keeping readership of evening brands up.
- Evenings have to play to their strengths — local contacts and knowledge plus a trusted brand — not their weaknesses (the delays inherent in the print publishing distribution model), especially if they’ve shifted to overnight printing, as so many have done to boost the sales opportunity time offered to potential buyers.
Perhaps they should consider reviving the “Stop Press” section but migrating it to their websites (maybe in a click-and-print format?) so the paper is still the place to get local breaking news after the print edition has gone to press. It’s certainly an idea, ‘cause otherwise news consumers will just go elsewhere when they want to know the latest.
