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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
October 2016 5 1
MEDIA
T
he recent Audit Bureau of Circulation
(ABC) figures for newspaper sales for
January-June 2016 show an alarming
decrease for nearly all Irish newspaper
titles, with the demise of the industry
itself now, for many, inevitable.
Of the national newspapers, The Irish Times
dropped 5.5 percent compared to the first half of
last year, The Irish Independent is down 6.4 per-
cent, The Irish Examiner 6.7 percent and The
Evening Herald 8.4 percent in the same period.
Most daily tabloids are down, apart from the
Irish Sun, which saw a rise of 4.6 percent year on
year.
The Sunday Independent dropped 6.7 percent
year, The Sunday Business Post 3.5 percent, The
Sunday Times 6.4 percent and The Sunday World
8.9 percent. The Irish Mail on Sunday fell by 7.2
percent while the Irish Sun on Sunday recorded
the only rise in circulation at +9 percent.
Overall, the circulation of daily print titles was
5.7 percent lower and of the Sundays 6.3 percent
lower.
Globally, the threat to newspapers is epi-
demic. In May 2016, the 121-year-old Tampa Bay
Tribune, Florida, ceased publication; in March,
the London Independent and Independent on
Sunday ceased their print publications and
November 2015 saw Russia's only independent
English-speaking title The Moscow Times end its
daily edition in favour of a weekly format.
In 2013, The Washington Post was sold to
Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey
P Bezos for $250m. In September 2010, the
Chairman and Publisher of The New York Times
announced to an International Newsroom
Summit that: "We will stop printing the New York
Times sometime in the future, date TBD". The
Guardian, whose web edition is the world’s
second most popular English-language newspa-
per website – after the Daily Mail online, has
shed 200 jobs and clocked up losses of £69m for
the last financial year with falls in both print and
digital revenue leading to an £8m fall in total
turnover to £209.5m. Digital revenues were
£81.9m, down almost £2m from the preceding
year as Facebook and Google ate up the bulk of
the money it had made from mobile
advertising.
Based on current trends, commentators have
predicted that only the Sunday and weekend
newspapers will survive in a culture immersed
in Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Youtube and
with the proliferation of citizen journalism offer
-
ing free 'news' content.
What New Media offer is 'free' news as it hap
-
pens from an infinite number of sources around
the globe; in the age of New Media, traditional
values of accuracy, accountability and profes-
sionalism are at risk from unverifiable facts,
unconfirmed sources and the constant need for
instant news; and gossip.
With daily newspapers, today's news is essen-
tially yesterday's, or this morning's at best.
Newspapers have made a concerted effort to
shift content towards analysis and commentary,
but this hasn't been enough.
What the recent ABC figures don't reveal is
where these disenfranchised readers are migrat-
ing. The loss of newspaper revenue may be
partly attributable to growing internet usage and
online culture, but this does not necessarily
mean those same readers are now reading news
online.
A decline of 10,000 readers for a national
newspaper does not equate to an additional
10,000 people reading or accessing news online.
Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and other social
media account for most internet usage, so per-
haps not all migrated readers/users will be
regular perusers of the Guardian online edition.
A 'cornerstone of democracy' for over 400
years is now in danger of imploding. Attempts by
newspapers to embrace New Media by offering
pay walls for access to online content have so far
been largely unsuccessful (though the Guardian
now boasts 50,000 ‘subscribers’); cynics point
to the obvious - there is simply too much 'free'
news to be harnessed online.
Print Media's only hope is to reinvent their cur-
rent business model and somehow embrace
their biggest rivals. What that does for journal-
ism is another story.
Seeya print
Seeya quality
by Ken Phelan
Overall, the circulation of
Irish daily print titles was
5.7 percent lower and of the
Sundays 6.3 percent lower,
for the year
Print Newspaper Advertising Revenue Adjusted
for Ination, 1950 to 2011
Source: mjperry.blogspot.com
