How regional papers can rise and shine
The Evening Telegraph in Coventry announced last week that, on 2 October 2006, it will switch from being an evening paper to a morning one. It’s not alone: The Press in York, the Bolton Evening News and the Lancashire Telegraph all recently switched to early a.m. publication.
A spokesman for the NUJ described this trend as a cost-cutting exercise by the major regional newspaper groups and doubted that “yesterday’s news served up tomorrow” would sell. He suggested that the “twin evils of falling circulation and falling advertising revenue are best fought by improving the amount, quality and freshness of the news”.
However, Coventry Telegraph editor Alan Kirby believes his paper (circulation now below 60,000) must respond to the changing habits of his time-pressed readers by publishing in the morning.
What’s to be done? Kirby asks in the 11 Aug edition of Press Gazette.
“Employ more reporters, photographers and subs? Invest in more pagination? Redesign? Relaunch? Sack the editor? Or wake up and accept the fact that the world in Coventry has changed?
Today people just don’t have time to read their local paper at night, no matter how good it might be. Fancy spending your Friday evening reading 100 pages of Coventry news and information, including the stories you’ve heard on the radio on the way home? Do me a favour”.
Kirby argues that exclusives which can be read throughout the day, not breaking news, are now the prime drivers of newspaper sales, and that publishers – in his case, Trinity Mirror – must give people a newspaper when they want it.
“[The Coventry Telegraph] is a local paper for local people. It’s a unique product in which on-the-day news is no longer the priority. We’ll be there with a bright, entertaining and informative read for everyone all through the day, at whatever time they choose to read it. At breakfast, on the bus or train, in their lunch hour or, for a diminishing number, in the armchair at night.”
See www.pressgazette.co.uk and www.iccoventry.co.uk
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