Evening newspapers: a thing of the past?

Evening newspapers: a thing of the past?

An element missing from NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear’s defence of evening newspapers is that morning publication is a rather crowded market place. And the biggest cities have local-ish freesheets. Giving up your evening monopoly sounds like madness… even with big savings to be got from cutting back on distribution.

That publishers are panicking is hard to deny. On the positive side, the Manchester Evening News has been given a nice makeover. But the free city centre distribution idea appears to be falling flat on its face.

Local newspapers need to connect with their cities, but reading the Manchester Evening News, you imagine the editor struggling to locate the city on a map. Giving the newspaper away wasn’t that brave given that sales were already inconsequential. What would be brave would be to follow Jeremy Dear’s advice and put some money into turning our newspapers into something people actually want to read.
See also: AOL /discuss Journalism
Contact Stephen Newton

Posted at : August 7th, 2006 - 7:14 am
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