The decline continues

expectationlost

hope it wasn't here that I read this, it came out of the DOB court case that but Kehoe and Lyons are planning to start an online subscription business news site

JTMan

expectationlost wrote: »

Kehoe and Lyons are planning to start an online subscription business news site

The Irish market is too small to support this. It has taken the SBP a decade to get 2,800 subscribers.

IRE60

JTMan wrote: »

The Irish market is too small to support this. It has taken the SBP a decade to get 2,800 subscribers.

The SBP polaxed their first effort to go online - if I heard correctly it was a bespoke cms from a South African company - nightmare really.

I think pricing is the key - and cards on the table - I took up the Sunday Times offer of €5 per month - at that price for 7 days it was too good to pass up.

So, if the SBP pitched me 5 a month - I'd be tempted (and I'm no a regular reader) And I don't want to know about their overhead coz they are a print outfit!

Loafing Oaf

IRE60 wrote: »

I think pricing is the key - and cards on the table - I took up the Sunday Times offer of €5 per month - at that price for 7 days it was too good to pass up. !

Well if they don't attract a decent number of takers at that price, I think we can give up on the 'subscription model' for funding online journalism.

I wonder is there a masterplan to hike up the price once they have drawn in enough customers.

expectationlost

Irish Times offering you subscription to New York Times too for 4 euro a week https://www.irishtimes.com/subscribe/ie but only to new subscribers and "This promotion is subject to a six month contract period. You may cancel your subscription at any time during your first month of service. Your New York Times Basic Digital access code will be delivered by email following commencement of second month’s service" you have to wait a month?

Loafing Oaf

Daily Mail to cut more than 20% of its Irish staff
Media group says downsizing triggered by falling paper sales and declining ad revenue

But in somewhat better news for the Irish newspaper industry

Denis O'Brien loses defamation case against Sunday Business Post

PointHop123

That's fantastic news about Denis O'Brien - and he has to pay all costs.

JTMan

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

Daily Mail to cut more than 20% of its Irish staff
Media group says downsizing triggered by falling paper sales and declining ad revenue

Surprised that the 7 day Daily Mail Ireland operation has 156 staff. The Irish Daily Star has 51 staff albeit no Sunday edition and no digital presence but still 156 seems high.

Meanwhile Reach (Mirror) are letting staff go too.

Colonel Claptrap

I wonder how many of those 2,896 subscriptions are active/regular readers.

I subscribed 6 months ago, realised I wasn't using the subscription half as much as I thought I would, and decided to cancel.

I logged into the website, but under my account there is no option to cancel. It's fairly cryptic.
I logged into the app, and it's the same.

So how do you cancel your subscription?

A Google of 'business post cancel subscription' returns this result:

https://www.businesspost.ie › terms-of-use

Terms of use? Surely that can't be right?

When you click this link you are met with 17 walls of legal text. After scrolling down for an eternity past these subsections:

Terms of Use
General
Site Contents
User comments, feedback, and other submissions
Products
Links to other websites and services
Disclaimer
Indemnification
Miscellaneous
Access
Paid subscription Service (...We're getting close)
Cancelling a Paid Subscription Service (...Finally)

Only then do you receive this gem:

"Subscriptions purchased through our mobile responsive website can be cancelled by phone during business hours (Monday to Friday 9:30a.m. until 5:30p.m. Irish time) on (+353) 1 602 6000 or email helpdesk@sbpost.ie for a free call back."

What a load of bollox!

6 Months later I still haven't cancelled my account, because during those office hours, I am quite busy in...yes, you've guessed it...my office.

More fool me.

Muahahaha

PointHop123 wrote: »

That's fantastic news about Denis O'Brien - and he has to pay all costs.

It is good news but part of me feels that DOB will still view this as a victory. Even in losing the case he has sent the print and broadcast media out a loud and clear message that he will sue for any little thing. That creates a chilling effect whereby journalists are scared to report anything in relation to him. Lawyers working for the media become ultra cautious and don't approve the publication of news that is in the public interest.

It is clearly a stretegy of O'Briens to use our next to useless defamation laws as a tool to silence the media that he doesn't already control. Why else would he be throwing around legal letters like confetti:-

Seamus Dooley of the National Union of Journalists has told RTE R1’s Drivetime that since 1998 Denis O’Brien has taken out 70 separate legal actions against Irish journalists/media outlets.

https://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/11/04/a-boy-named-sue/

O'Brien might have lost today but this is just one battle in his overall war on journalism. The more he sues, the less they will hold him to account which is exactly what he wants.

JTMan

The FT have mentioned the term "ghost newspapers" to describe newspapers that are filled with copy and paste wire articles and adverts and nothing of original editorial significance.

Ghost newspapers perfectly describes the farce that Irish newspapers like The Herald, Irish Daily Star and Sunday World have become. A bunch of adverts and copy and pasted bought in articles mainly full of junk wrapped in a thin rag.

From the FT ...

More than 1,800 US newspapers, including century-old titles that made it through the Great Depression, have closed over the past 15 years, while many of those still printed are shells of their former selves, thin papers filled with wire copy and adverts — which observers have labelled “ghost newspapers”.

The Denver Post now qualifies for ghost paper status, says Penny Abernathy, chair of the University of North Carolina’s school of journalism. She estimates that between 1,000 and 1,500 of the remaining US newspapers meet that definition — many of them owned by private equity and hedge fund investors.

jmcc

JTMan wrote: »

The FT have mentioned the term "ghost newspapers" to describe newspapers that are filled with copy and paste wire articles and adverts and nothing of original editorial significance.

There are also networks of newspaper sites owned by the same company that tend to repackage articles across their websites. This isn't so much cut and paste as Phil Space content.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

Muahahaha wrote: »

Wow that is a really low level of subs for a business specific newspaper, you'd imagine they would need at least 10,000 to keep their head above water.

The one thing that many people seem to ignore when looking at subscription figures is the subscription type. A yearly subscription is better than a daily or weekly subscription. Providing such breakdowns can show that the digital subscription figures do not provide much of a basis for a profitable or even viable operation. To the press release recyclers masquerading as "journalists", such analysis is a bit too complex. It is simply a question of getting the press release out with their byline on top and a seemingly intelligent final paragraph about how their comic is out-performing all the rest.

Regards...jmcc

JTMan

jmcc wrote: »

There are also networks of newspaper sites owned by the same company that tend to repackage articles across their websites.

Yeah, there are heaps of repackaged websites such as Breakingnews.ie (IT/Examiner content) and Dublin Live (Mirror content) etc

The idea seems to be to use multiple websites to get as much blood from their content as possible.

jmcc

JTMan wrote: »

Yeah, there are heaps of repackaged websites such as Breakingnews.ie (IT/Examiner content) and Dublin Live (Mirror content) etc

The idea seems to be to use multiple websites to get as much blood from their content as possible.

From a programming point of view, it is not a difficult task. Some content spinners on the web have been doing it for years to create their own networks of sites. It is also extremely easy to automate the process.

Regards...jmcc

Dr_serious2

jmcc wrote: »

From a programming point of view, it is not a difficult task. Some content spinners on the web have been doing it for years to create their own networks of sites. It is also extremely easy to automate the process.

Regards...jmcc

Please stop signing off 'regards jmcc'

We can see who wrote the post by your username.

Regards, drserious2

An Ciarraioch

Dr_serious2 wrote: »

Please stop signing off 'regards jmcc'

We can see who wrote the post by your username.

Regards, drserious2

Was his trademark at politics.ie.

L1011

Dr_serious2 wrote: »

Please stop signing off 'regards jmcc'

We can see who wrote the post by your username.

Regards, drserious2

By making me look at his username and hence the user title below if, I've just realised I have his book (5th Edition) on a bookshelf in my office. And the notional concept given in it as a hole in all future satellite encoding systems turned out to be not only plausible but real and common.

You're criticising a God, of sorts :pac:

Dr_serious2

L1011 wrote: »

By making me look at his username and hence the user title below if, I've just realised I have his book (5th Edition) on a bookshelf in my office. And the notional concept given in it as a hole in all future satellite encoding systems turned out to be not only plausible but real and common.

You're criticising a God, of sorts :pac:

Ya wha?

L1011

Dr_serious2 wrote: »

Ya wha?

jmcc is the operator of the former Hackwatch News service (you need to be on the full skin to see user titles all the time I think)

It was a blog of sorts in later years, but predated the term by many, many, many years. And was available in printed form.

jmcc

Dr_serious2 wrote: »

Ya wha?

At the time, Sky's VideoCrypt and France Telecom's D2-MAC EuroCrypt systems were the most secure video encryption systems on the market. VideoCrypt was protected by algorithms designed by some very smart people including the S in RSA. EuroCrypt used the Data Encryption Standard (DES). It took less than ten seconds to work out a solution. It just seemed rather obvious and now every satellite TV box using keys off Internet, rather than using its own valid smart card, to decrypt programmes uses that theory. To some, I was more the Devil incarnate than a God. But it all happened a long time ago.

Regards...jmcc

JTMan

Back on topic ... the February 2019 UK ABC numbers are out. iLevel report here. Press Gazette report here. The decline continues.

Muahahaha

Theres a report in the current Phoenix that the Indo did their usual spin on labelling themselves as Irelands biggest selling newspaper when the recent iLevel results were released. But the report said that when you strip out the bulk sales the Indo have actually been overtaken by the Irish Times. It said that of the Indo circulation of 87,512 a massive 17,500 or 21% were bulk sales. When you strip these out the IT are selling 3,000 more papers a day than the Indo

IRE60

Muahahaha wrote: »

It said that of the Indo circulation of 87,512 a massive 17,500 or 21% were bulk sales. When you strip these out the IT are selling 3,000 more papers a day than the Indo

Not exactly……
I grant you, one in five of your papers’ circulation figure being given away is not exactly a sustainable business model. The indo have the highest level of ‘multiple copy sales’ in the market and it’s rising year on year.


I haven’t seen the phoenix but I’ll take a look.


The reporting by the Times on the last circulation numbers were flakey I the way they amalgamated their R.o.I. circulation along with their N.I. circulation including their own bulks and their digital subs to give them a ‘headline’ circulation number of 79,406. But then to compare it to other papers using the RoI number alone is disingenuous.


If you strip out the bulks from the indo they are at 59,203. If you strip out the bulks (and digital subs!) from the IT they are at 49,095 – some 10,108 behind the Indo.

JTMan

From the WSJ, a study, in the US, has indicated that further mass closures are coming to the local newspaper industry. Half may close by 2021.

As circulation declines continue, the most vulnerable area to closures is surely local newspapers. I have tried to do some profitability calculations on some local newspaper titles in Ireland and it is difficult to see how many are keeping their head above water, this is only going to get worse as the migration to digital continues.

According to Penelope Muse Abernathy, the Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics at the University of North Carolina and a former Wall Street Journal executive, more than one in five newspapers have closed in the last decade and a half, leaving half the counties in the nation with just one newspaper, and 200 counties with no newspaper at all.

Nicco Mele, director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, predicted in 2016 that as many as half of the country’s local newspapers will no longer be in print by 2021.

L1011

I think the Irish obsession with gossip and the local papers covering district courts has kept them going further than other countries.

It is the primary reason I buy the local rag every week - and the stack delivered every Wednesday evening to my local shop is bigger than all 7 days of the Indo put together

If DC transcripts went online, the local papers would fold

donspeekinglesh

L1011 wrote: »

I think the Irish obsession with gossip and the local papers covering district courts has kept them going further than other countries.

It is the primary reason I buy the local rag every week - and the stack delivered every Wednesday evening to my local shop is bigger than all 7 days of the Indo put together

If DC transcripts went online, the local papers would fold

Exactly the same reason for me. (And same paper.) Can't remember the last time I bought a national.

Loafing Oaf

JTMan wrote: »

Half may close by 2021.

Half of the total as of 2016.
/pedant/

gormdubhgorm

I feel guilty now I can't remember the last time i brought a newspaper.
It's all my fault!
I am not sure whether it is because the standard of journalism has fallen or I have just got cynical with age.
For example - Paul Kimmage styles himself as a serious hard hitting journalist.
But to me he is a one trick pony.
The independent really indulge him and recently they even let him write a 'piece' in homage to his dead brother.

https://www.independent.ie/sport/other-sports/cycling/paul-kimmage-remembers-his-brother-dear-raphael-there-is-no-one-in-this-world-that-i-admire-as-much-as-you-37872152.html

I will be completely honest - my first thought was why would I want to read that guff?

Muahahaha

L1011 wrote: »

I think the Irish obsession with gossip and the local papers covering district courts has kept them going further than other countries.

It is the primary reason I buy the local rag every week - and the stack delivered every Wednesday evening to my local shop is bigger than all 7 days of the Indo put together

If DC transcripts went online, the local papers would fold

Isn't that already happening? Lots of local news websites have popped up and they do court reporting, deaths and local news. The likes of kildarenow.com and donegaldaily.com are reporting the local gossip for free and on a daily basis rather than once a week. I know up in Donegal that donegaldaily.com has become the go to news source for a lot of locals, it must be having a detrimental effect on the Donegal Democrat.