The decline in newspapers: MM case studies

The New Day
The New Day was a brand new newspaper launched by institution Trinity Mirror earlier this year and folded after just two months. Complete the following tasks on your blog:

1) Read the feature: 'A New Day for British journalism' on page 6 of Media Magazine 57 (our Media Magazine archive is here).

2) What was the New Day trying to achieve?

They were trying to achieve a new market of readers, those who didn't typically buy newspapers in the first place. Alison Phillips, the papers editor, claimed that news paper sales have not declined because "they have fallen out of love with newspapers as a format, but because what is currently available on the newsstand is not meeting their needs." They decided to come up with a paper that met these needs being a cheap, to the point news paper.  Aimed at a 35 to 55 audience who wanted a more modern approach to the news with a ruthless edit, balanced analyses and opinions without the political line (much like magazines) This proposition paired with Simon Fox's view (Chief Executive of Trinity Mirror) "we believe a large number of them can be tempted back with the right product." They wanted to bring back the audience who were now turning to online news.

3) List the key statistics on the first page: how many people buy newspapers in the UK? How has this declined in the last year?

• 'Today' lasted only for the best part of 10 years (closing 17th november 1995)
• independent 1986-2016 (i remains online)
• 'the European' 1990-1998 (once a week publishing)
• Over a million people have stopped buying a newspaper in the past two years

4) What audience were the New Day trying to attract?

Aimed at a 35 to 55 audience who wanted a more modern approach to the news with a ruthless edit, balanced analyses and opinions without the political line (much like magazines)

instead they seemed to be attracting at a younger audience of the 20 somethings, or parents with young children. A lot of their articles seemed to be aimed at young women and lacked a sports section that would attract a male audience typically (as well as a sports loving female audience)

5) Why do you think the New Day failed so spectacularly? There are several possible reasons listed in the article but do develop your own opinion here as well.

• They increased their price from 25p to 50p in very short notice - losing much of the audience and falling to 40,000.
• Ill created market research is also the problem, they were receiving positive responses from their tests only because the same questions where asked with little variety often leading to a positive response. 
• Coupled with a failure to invest in promotion,
• no real USP.

Overall, i think all of these problems played a huge role in their failure but mainly because of the fact that they conducted bad research prior to their launch leading to an over confidence in a failing product causing them to become complacent with advertising and over estimating their small difference as a USP, they were targeting a very hard to reach audience with a product they dislike with a complacent and over confident approach. 

The Guardian
The Guardian is another British newspaper struggling with a steep decline in print sales. However, the Guardian's survival strategy has been built around a global online approach to digital content. Complete the following tasks on your blog:

1) Read the feature: 'Can The Guardian survive in a changing media landscape?' on page 9 of Media Magazine 57.

2) List the key statistics on page 10: How many unique digital browsers used the Guardian website in June 2016? What are The Guardian's latest print sales figures? How does this compare to the Telegraph? In terms of finances, how much did the Guardian lose in 2015? 

• print news sales has steadily declined since explosive growth of internet in 1990s
• Guradian website is the 3rd most read in the world (120 million + monthly unique bowsers)
• (june 2016 daily average 9 million users unique browsers)
• (only a third from the UK)
• Feb 2016: 9 million daily average browsers - way behind mailonline with 14 million
• Ahead of the telegraph who has 4 million
• but pint circulation of gurdian is only 161,000
• but print dailytelegraph is 472,000
• independent (before closing has) 54,000
• throughout 2015; guardian lost '£70 million' and digital ad sales falling to offset the effect of decreased revenue of print
• leading to a 20% cut in their shelving plans

3) What has been The Guardian's strategy for reversing this decline?

Guardian Media Group’s "plans to make the company more efficient, reduce costs, and attain new growth opportunities"

Over the past two years the Guardian has developed a 24-hour rolling coverage of major world news events.
The US takes over a live blog on major events seg. Pairis attacks  from the "UK at about 6pm-7pm. Then at about midnight, UK time, Australia takes over and the UK picks it back up again at 7am."

4) What global event did The Guardian's digital coverage win awards for?

The Paris attacks 

Society of Editors.At their Press Awards for 2015, the Guardian was winner of the Website of the Year.

5) In your opinion, will the global website strategy be enough to save The Guardian?

The article says they have managed to use a of technology, an important key in this day and age, to create their news service which is innovative and full of blogs with interactive comment sections. They also have more than 120 million unique browsers every month. Then increasing further by 10%. Thus meaning the have established their postion in a very strong way, however the media isnt easy to keep up with constantly changing technology it depends very heavily on how much they keep their website up to date with technology and consumer preferences and needs which are changing rapidly now-a-days.