No-one will be surprised that today's local newspaper ABCs show, for the most part, continued year-on-year decline for titles across the UK. But what's the real story, and - more importantly - what's the real answer?
It is easy to get lost in statistics which, let's face it, is not a nice place to be. We know that circulation figures only tell half the story, and there are several other trends here.
To pick just a few:
Print circulation decline
Among the carnage, there's an interesting trend - the tiny minority of titles to record growth have been the smallest weekly local newspapers. Should we see this as more evidence of the demand for the niche?
Free newspapers
Several papers, including the Liverpool Daily Post and Manchester Evening News, saw paid circulation fall substantially as they introduce free copies. Does this strategy leave newspapers at the mercy of a more fickle advertising market, or is it worth sacrificing the minority income from cover sales for potential extra readership?
The evenings that aren't evenings
Why are several reborn "morning" newspapers - like the Oxford Mail and Swindon Advertiser - still listed as evening papers? The answer, says ABC, is that they were originally registered as evening papers and so are still listed as such.
If it looks like a fish and smells like a fish - isn't it a fish?
Propaganda from the Newspaper Society
Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the lobby group put out a survey today with lots of jolly happy sparkly good news about the local newspaper industry. The report estimates there are 49,246 employees across the industry, 26.5% of whom are editorial and 31.7% advertising. That backs up the oft-repeated quote by Mark Dodson, chief executive of Guardian Media Group's regional newspapers: "We work in the advertising business and we've been kidding ourselves for 20 years that we work in the newspaper industry."
Part of the release was the most mind-boggling piece of stat-mashing, attributed to Newspaper Society president Russell Whitehair: "Growth in local newspaper websites means they now collectively represent one of the top UK online properties, attracting an estimated 20 million unique users a month - which would put it above the BBC, alongside Yahoo! and within striking distance of eBay, MSN and Google."
Or, to put it another way, even if you bundle together the estimated audience for all 1303 1102 local newspaper websites - that's still nowhere near as many unique users as the leading search engine. Right.
New business models
Figures for online readership are still increasing, but what is emerging as the best business model for local newspapers? Is it to provide breaking news and classifieds online, while keeping the print edition for longer, more feature-style stories? Or do newspapers need to scrap the traditional publishing model completely, and rebuild themselves from scratch?
What do you think about the trends in local newspaper publishing? What do you regard as best practice?
Or maybe you don't care about local newspaper at all. After all, won't they all be out of business in ten years?
