The decline continues

Is it known how many digital subs the SBP has? With their AB target market and specialised business news you'd imagine they are in a good position to sell lots of yearly subs, especially given many of them would be company expenses so less likely to cancel once the sub is signed up for.

IRE60 wrote: »

I'd be of the opinion that INM will throw the Daly Star under the bus before the Herald - wrongly IMO.

INM previously said that the titles will continue as long as they make a "positive contribution" to the group. Maybe it will be a case of which title fails under this definition first but the consequences of letting one title go are big for the group in terms of lost cross-group revenue for distribution, printing and content. Hence, it still might be worth keeping the titles going as loss making if they are still making an overall net positive contribution to the group.

IRE60 wrote: »

The tariffs they are an unknown quantity but only hit a few publications on the face of it. The Sunday Times prints the Mag in Bligty and ships it over on a Wednesday - thats going to be interesting. Likewise the DS and DM throw papers across the border every night - whats the deal there?

Interesting. The WTO tariff for newspapers seems to be 15% plus lots of administration costs with paying the tariffs. So if anyone moves newspapers north bound or south bound they will have to weigh up as to whether it is worth it or not. It is surely only worth it if you have large circulation and think readers will pay more.

IRE60 wrote: »

I just can’t understand the duplicity involved here. The Irish Times go to great lengths to extrapolate the ROI numbers only (even though it’s called the Island of Ireland Report) in the following paragraph - which is online here

It is the Irish Times. It inflated the property bubble and bought a property website for 52 million Euro only to see the bubble burst and its circulation figures collapse in the last ten years.

The problem for the Irish Times, like most newspapers dependent on the ABC demographics, is that many of those in the ABC demographics are ahead of the curve in terms of uptake of new technologies and delivery methods. These demographics would have increasingly drifted to online news because it was more immediate, wasn't yesderday's news tomorrow and wasn't some pondscum intellect's opinion. Good journalism is hard work and expensive. Paying some dimwitted commentators to create controversy rather than paying for good journalism may have seemed like a good move (the shift from journalism to commentary seems to have started in the 1990s). It also originated when the Web was young. The Web now gives everyone the ability to publish their opinions. That unique selling point of "informed" commentary doesn't really seem so unique now.

It is also not exactly informed either. Why should the opinions and press release recycling of some non-specialist be considered more trustworthy than a specialist? The Web has increased the ability of people to get specialist and informed commentary. So what if some "technology" journalist is gushing about the latest mobile phone cover! People want to know why the Hell they can't get broadband and not recycled propaganda from telcos about how people don't really want broadband.

Then there's the whole Fake News issue and the credibilty of "journalists". Are they PR shills or journalists? The rigged 2011 presidential election showed just how biased and untrustworthy a lot of the Dublin media was when it came to telling the truth. These clowns thought that Brexit would not pass and it did. They had become propagandists for Hillary Clinton and were so, so upset when "their" candidate lost to Donald Trump. But that whole activist as "journalist" thing has been responsible for the diminished trust people have in newspapers. How can people be certain that what is being presented as "news" is unbiased? There are more sources for news these days but the Irish Times is just a provincial newspaper in a world with news available 24 hours a day.

The reason for the Irish Times' decline is this: Yesterday's news tomorrow. That and people aren't buying it because they've already read it elsewhere.

Regards...jmcc

Indo spin 'article' on the ABC stats here. So much for independent journalism.

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

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?

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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

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

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 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.

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 wrote: »

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.

In specific DC areas only, so far.

Seems that IN&M is in play.
https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2019/0404/1040621-independent-news-and-media-approach/

Regards...jmcc

IRE60 wrote: »

Just about to post that! Very interesting times. Would have to pass the CCPE

And there's the politics of the situation. Dinny spent over 500 million or so acquiring his shares and he is unlikely to make that back on any sale. It is all very early stage so there's no real information out there yet. However, an IN&M without Dinny as the largest shareholder could be interesting and the decline in advertising revenue will be one of the first things addressed by the new owners. That could mean consolidation and elimination. Most of the "content generator" stuff on the Dindo site could easily be replaced by a few algorithms (like the Journal and DailyEdge people, it is hard to consider them as journalists rather than as content generators). The attempt to imitate the Daily Mail site but without the T&A does not seem to have worked out and there was some digital subscription model mooted a few years ago. The digital subscriptions thing is highly problematic in a market as small as Ireland and the quality of content to justify a subscription isn't really there.

Regards...jmcc