Nobody quite knows why Trinity Mirror should think of paying good money to buy the Express and Daily Star from Richard Desmond, in his continuing new role as Mr Sell Anything. Consider though: the Express may be the incredible shrinking paper, in staff and circulation. But what’s left of it still makes a profit of £13m or so. More, its elderly, Ukipy readership is a good fit with the Mirror’s elderly, Laboury audience. Roll everything together in print and you’ve got two million readers. And then there’s online, where last month express.co.uk unique browsers were up 90% year on year, with dailystar.co.uk up 83%. Maybe the raw numbers themselves aren’t very impressive, but the growth – now Mr D has decided to join the digital pack – shows there’s life in the old grey dog yet.
Pay for a newspaper? Me?
The most teeth-grinding feature of the Media Insight Project’s latest report on the reading habits of US “millennials” (under-35s or so) is not when it spots the difference between typical Facebook content (the latest celebrity stuff, arts and human interest) and hard news from reporters out in the field. That’s a useful division. What’s difficult is finding a millennial ready to pay for it. Cue Sam, a 19-year-old from San Francisco: “I really wouldn’t pay for any kind of news because, as a citizen, it’s my right to know the news.”
