The decline continues

JTMan

The Times Ireland Daily edition to close. Last edition probably on 21 June 2019.

17 people have lost their jobs. 3 people to be retained for the digital edition.

Circulation had declined to 3,363.

dulpit

JTMan wrote: »

The Times Ireland Daily edition to close. Last edition probably on 21 June 2019.

17 people have lost their jobs. 3 people to be retained for the digital edition.

Circulation had declined to 3,363.

Very disappointing news. The quality was getting better and better with more Irish focused content. The loss of jobs will result in what I can only assume is an inferior product, that will be essentially a UK publication with limited Irish content.

Hope the journos land somewhere good...

IRE60

They are keeping the digital edition - with much reduced staff

IRE60

IRE60 wrote: »

They are keeping the digital edition - with much reduced staff

No wonder it was reduced to €5pm recently. Hopefully the content doesn’t drop too drastically.

dulpit

cisk wrote: »

No wonder it was reduced to €5pm recently. Hopefully the content doesn’t drop too drastically.

It'll have to. It'll be the end of their investigative stuff, which has been quite good over the last year or so.

JTMan

Irish Times are reporting that Mediahuis to keep cutting costs at IN&M.

Costs will be cut in print operation due to "redeployment" (translation: outsourcing printing to the Irish Times), cuts in other fixed assets (distribution going too?), cut in other areas once Mediahuis have examined the business (usual editorial cuts).

Will "invest in INM brands" but "business is transitioning gradually from print to digital".

jmcc

JTMan wrote: »

Irish Times are reporting that Mediahuis to keep cutting costs at IN&M.

There's a bit of a "better them than us" attitude to the IT's coverage of these cuts.

Will "invest in INM brands" but "business is transitioning gradually from print to digital".

The Dindo website is a complete mess from an Information Architecture point of view and there is a possible archival business there that has been missed by the crayon jockey web design that has the site operating in an kind of eternal now (no back editions to which access could be sold).

Regards...jmcc

L1011

INM's archive ops are somewhat chaotic and effectively outsourced to the Irish Newspaper Archives for the entire group including Regionals. They unfortunately seem to have been given muddy microfiche for most of it and the OCR falls to bits before the 1960s; which contrasts hugely to the Irish Times offering it all themselves with pretty decent OCR

expectationlost

obviously a UK based decision but would a leaky paywall have helped Times Ireland

JTMan

expectationlost wrote: »

obviously a UK based decision but would a leaky paywall have helped Times Ireland

The Times Ireland have a leaky paywall, free reg for 2 articles per week, just not as leaky as the Irish Times paywall.

OldMrBrennan83

Their subscription cancellation policy was always too shady or I would definitely have paid for the content they offered.

expectationlost

JTMan wrote: »

The Times Ireland have a leaky paywall, free reg for 2 articles per week, just not as leaky as the Irish Times paywall.

opened article in private browser and its say subscribe if want more then the first paragraph it offers you a free trial but when I enter an email address it goes 404

if you go the free trial elsewhere it offers you first month free but wants your credit card to start charging you next month

IRE60

dulpit wrote: »

It'll have to. It'll be the end of their investigative stuff, which has been quite good over the last year or so.

The economic reality is that the Times Ireland ABC is currently only 800 copies above its pre-launch numbers. That's not sustainable.

marieholmfan

IRE60 wrote: »

The economic reality is that the Times Ireland ABC is currently only 800 copies above its pre-launch numbers. That's not sustainable.

People buying it by accident or because the Irish Times is sold out ; or very occasional spikes because of Brexit and Windsor Weddings and Babies.

expectationlost

The Future Of Newspapers RTE SOR
BROADCAST • 10:00 • 23rd May 2019

Aine Kerr, Kinsen, Ian Keogh, Former Editor of the Sunday Business Post, Kate Shanahan, Head of Journalism at TU Dublin, Mark Hennessy, Irish Times
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21559230

JTMan

The WSJ have an article about how to navigate a collapsing magazine print market here.

Print businesses can be divided into “problems” and “situations.” Problems can’t be solved with any amount of time and money. Situations, on the other hand, can. Don’t waste money trying to fix hopelessly weak problem ones, no matter how strong the romantic attachment.

Perhaps this is some good advice for Mediahuis regarding the many regional and several national problem INM brands.

IRE60

expectationlost wrote: »

The Future Of Newspapers RTE SOR
BROADCAST • 10:00 • 23rd May 2019

Aine Kerr, Kinsen, Ian Keogh, Former Editor of the Sunday Business Post, Kate Shanahan, Head of Journalism at TU Dublin, Mark Hennessy, Irish Times
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21559230

Thought the panel was good - bar Aine, who's remit was to recycle news content in their app! When questioned about how much the publishers would get from that app she stumbled - I'll paraphrase for her ' emmmm, fcuk all'.
Another company recycling others proprietary work!!

IRE60

JTMan wrote: »

The WSJ have an article about how to navigate a collapsing magazine print market here.

Perhaps this is some good advice for Mediahuis regarding the many regional and several national problem INM brands.

'The titles had the richest history and greatest prestige, but they depended on news content easily found elsewhere.'

Isn't that the Crux of the matter!!!!

JTMan

Harvard's Neiman Lab reports that the Boston Globe might have entered the small club of publications (FT, WSJ, NYT, Washington Post, Guardian etc) who have successfully made the transition to digital. Also, it might be the first ever local publication to make a successful transition.

Harvard's NL go on to set 4 interesting criteria that a publication needs to meet to make a successful print-to-digital transition:

1. Making more revenue from digital sources than from print.
2. Making more revenue from readers than from advertising.
3. Achieving net revenue growth, with digital dollars rising more quickly than print dollars are falling.
4. Having more digital subscribers than print subscribers.

No Irish publication is even remotely close to meeting this criteria.

Boston Globe print circulation has collapsed from 504,869 to 98,000. Digital subs are 112,241.

In the midst of free falling print sales, a tiny number of publications are succeeding digitally.

expectationlost

JTMan wrote: »

Harvard's Neiman Lab reports that the Boston Globe might have entered the small club of publications (FT, WSJ, NYT, Washington Post, Guardian etc) who have successfully made the transition to digital. Also, it might be the first ever local publication to make a successful transition.

Harvard's NL go on to set 4 interesting criteria that a publication needs to meet to make a successful print-to-digital transition:

1. Making more revenue from digital sources than from print.
2. Making more revenue from readers than from advertising.
3. Achieving net revenue growth, with digital dollars rising more quickly than print dollars are falling.
4. Having more digital subscribers than print subscribers.

No Irish publication is even remotely close to meeting this criteria.

Boston Globe print circulation has collapsed from 504,869 to 98,000. Digital subs are 112,241.

In the midst of free falling print sales, a tiny number of publications are succeeding digitally.

could Boston globe really be described as local?

JTMan

Fair point. Boston Globe is not exactly a standard local newspaper but covers local news but has a global reach.

Meanwhile, Laura Slattery, writes in the Irish Times that more UK newspapers may abandon their Irish edition ...

The existence of these editions has long been regarded as a head-office wheeze to use sales in the Republic to bolster circulation totals. If there is no other commercial imperative for being here, then the logic of this strategy will inevitably falter after 12 years of a declining print market.

IRE60

JTMan wrote: »

Fair point. Boston Globe is not exactly a standard local newspaper but covers local news but has a global reach.

Meanwhile, Laura Slattery, writes in the Irish Times that more UK newspapers may abandon their Irish edition ...

I begin to glaze over when Laura discusses anything to do with Associated Newspapers Ireland. It's the same 'party line' stuff as seen when they report on the papers ABC - its their take on the facts.

IRE60

DMG posted results today

Half Year Revenue:
Daily Mail / The Mail on Sunday - £208m -5%
MailOnline £76m +25%

JTMan

Interesting.

Print down 5%. Sales down 10% but profit down 5% via cost cutting.

Digital - via free with adverts model - the model that everyone had considered to the bin - seems to be back suceeding for DSG. They say it is just to their app and more direct visitors outside of social media. Interesting. I think DM Online might be an exception to the free does not work model. A bit like the way the Guardian is an exception too but thanks to donations in their model.

"Events" made 100 million profit. Not sure what type of events they organise. SBP is getting into events too.

expectationlost

Press Council Ombudsman annual report https://www.presscouncil.ie/about-us/recent-decisions-and-news/annual-report-for-2018-launched-

Speaking on RTs Morning Ireland, Mr Feeney pointed out how a site like Facebook would draw a readers' attention to a newspaper story, which is then read online but the newspaper does not receive revenue from the reader actually buying the paper. However, Facebook receives the online revenue.

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/0529/1052336-press-council/ where does one read full articles on facebook? if people are copying full articles you can complain about copyright infringement and get the page shut down

dublinman1990

There was a report yesterday about the state of the newspaper industry on the RTÉ 6.1 News. Did anyone see it?

EDIT: Ah. I can see the link above my post.

IRE60

"Speaking on RTs Morning Ireland, Mr Feeney pointed out how a site like Facebook would draw a readers' attention to a newspaper story, which is then read online but the newspaper does not receive revenue from the reader actually buying the paper. However, Facebook receives the online revenue"

The crazy thing about that is that SOR had a panel recently, it was like an American Wake, bemoaning the demise of the industry. One of the panelists supporting the business has set up an app to 'customise' a users news intake - aka - I''ll skim other sites, throw it on mine and collect the revenue from ads. The publishers, well they can lube themselves - for me.

expectationlost

IRE60 wrote: »

"Speaking on RTs Morning Ireland, Mr Feeney pointed out how a site like Facebook would draw a readers' attention to a newspaper story, which is then read online but the newspaper does not receive revenue from the reader actually buying the paper. However, Facebook receives the online revenue"

The crazy thing about that is that SOR had a panel recently, it was like an American Wake, bemoaning the demise of the industry. One of the panelists supporting the business has set up an app to 'customise' a users news intake - aka - I''ll skim other sites, throw it on mine and collect the revenue from ads. The publishers, well they can lube themselves - for me.

they don't use ads https://kinzen.com/faq for now

jmcc

IRE60 wrote: »

The crazy thing about that is that SOR had a panel recently, it was like an American Wake, bemoaning the demise of the industry. One of the panelists supporting the business has set up an app to 'customise' a users news intake - aka - I''ll skim other sites, throw it on mine and collect the revenue from ads. The publishers, well they can lube themselves - for me.

The funny thing is that the idea isn't new. The "Daily Me" idea of filtered and curated news has been around since the 1990s and even Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Medialab fame was pushing it. The management of Kinzen looks relatively strong but there's nothing to stop the newspaper publishers pushing their own version of such an app. The long-term option for the company seems to be a trade sale to one of the large publishers.

Regards...jmcc

JTMan

The FT reports on the increasing use of robots to write news articles in a fascinating article here.

• Main robot news system is called Radar — Reporters and Data and Robots.
• Bloomberg, AP, Iliffe Media and JPIMedia are amongst the users of robots.
• Radar is a joint venture between Press Association and data journalism start-up Urbs Media with an investment from Google.
• JPI (Scotsman, i and lots more) publishes 700 robot stories a week.
• Previously, robots were just used for sport and company results but now used for human interest and other areas.
• Example of fees - Radar charge 1,270 GBP per year per council that a media group wants a robot to cover.
• Iliffe Media say readers cannot tell the difference between a robot story and a human story.

Clear way for newspaper groups to cut costs further and cut journalist jobs further. Regional newspapers seem most primed for robot usage.