Sun on Sunday is getting into its stride

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 5 March 2012 at 14:00
Tags: National Newspapers, News Corp

After what I thought was a somewhat shaky start for The Sun Sunday a week ago – Britain’s newest national newspaper showed signs of getting into its stride yesterday.

And to be fair to editor Dominic Mohan and his team, they were given just a week’s notice to get the new title into print – so it is no surprise that there was room for improvement after week one. (more…)

Times paywall numbers: Rupert Murdoch’s long game could yet pay off

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 2 November 2010 at 10:52
Tags: Journalism, National Newspapers, News Corp, The Sunday Times, The Times, new media, newspapers

At first glance the first official reader figures for the The Times and Sunday Times’ paywalled websites do not look great.

Around 50,000 readers have signed up to become monthly subscribers of the websites, iPad editions and Kindle editions (and that figure also includes corporate subscribers). That’s just over 12,000 a month.

News International has lumped in all the pay-as-you go sales which weren’t renewed to come up with a more eye-catching 105,000 cumulative total: you can read the NI press release here.

The figures seem disappointing to me, especially compared with the more than 20 million unique users a month who used to visit the free-to-air Times Online website. But then again as a long-game strategy perhaps this could still pay off.

Taking a very ‘glass is half full’ view of the figures – at the current rate of growth the websites could have 1.2m subscribers in 10 years time, more than enough to replace departing print readers.

While recent year-on-year print circulation declines are horrendous for The Times (down 14.8 per cent) and Sunday Times (down 9.5 per cent), these reflect the axing of bulk give-aways. The picture over the last few months has been a lot more stable.

In June The Times had 503,642 print sales and the Sunday Times had 1,085,724. By September The Times had dropped to 486,868 and the Sunday Times was actually slightly up to 1,091,869.

So looking at the combined print and online totals both The Times and Sunday Times appear to have increase their paying readerships over the last four months. Not a bad result at all.

This 50,000 figure is way below some of the wild estimates put out by web metrics companies over the last few months. But taken in the round it could signal a news business that has a future.

This is still very early days for Operation Paywall and, perhaps surprisingly for a 79-year-old, I think Rupert Murdoch is playing the long game on this one.

Met police questions are irrelevant sideshow in NoW phone-hack row

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 7 September 2010 at 09:10
Tags: Journalism, Journalists, Law, National Newspapers, News Corp, News of the World

The question of whether the Metropolitan Police investigated the News of the World phone-hacking allegations thoroughly enough was the issue of the day yesterday in this ever more complicated tale.

Reports here by Press Gazette, and more here by The Guardian – and across the national press today.

The question of whether the Met Police did enough in 2006 – and subsequently – is getting Labour MPs energised, but it seems to me that it is an irrelevant side-show.

In 2006 the police investigated the phone-hack allegations and brought sufficient evidence for two men to be sent to jail. They used a spread of five public figures to bring the case, reasoning that it would be a waste of police time to endlessly investigate the case further.

I would argue that the prison terms for Clive Goodman and GlenMulcaire were unnecessarily harsh. They were jailed for intercepting phone messages under an obscure piece of legislation- the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act – and were first-time offenders. Their victims were no-doubt upset by the invasion of privacy – but it was only invasion of privacy and something which should really have been dealt with as a civil matter (as in the case of Max Mosley).

Violent criminals, burglars and conmen who commit life-destroying crimes walk free every day.

But the two NoW employees were made an example of – they did the crime, they paid a heavy price, and the editor (Andy Coulson) did the right thing and fell on his sword for, at the very least, losing control of his ship in a pretty serious way.

Are the Met’s critics really suggesting that police should have spent limitless resources on an open-ended inquiry into phone-hacking at the NoW? Because if that is the case, why stop there? We know from numerous sources, and as Press Gazette reported in 2006, that phone-hacking – or screwing – was rife across Fleet Street.

This issue has legs if:

1. The New York Times allegations are correct and former editor Andy Coulson did know more about phone-hacking than he has been letting on. If it is proven that he lied to Parliament during those select committee hearings then he will have to go from his new job as Downing Street head of communications.

2. It can be proven that phone-hacking has continued at the News of the World post 2007 . The NoW has now admitted that it has suspended a reporter pending an investigation into a new allegation of phone-hacking earlier this year. If that charge stands up the NoW has said it will sack the individual for gross misconduct, but it would nonetheless be a big blow to the credibility of a paper which says it has cleaned up its act on this issue.

Mark Thompson hits back at Murdoch in the battle for Britain’s media

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 10 September 2009 at 09:11
Tags: BBC, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, News Corp

The stage is now set for a battle for the British media between News Corp and the BBC.

James Murdoch fired the starting gun with his MacTaggart lecture in which he accused the BBC of launching a chilling land-grab and of “dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market”.

He desperately wants the BBC curbed so that News International’s newspaper can begin charging for online content.

Yesterday, BBC director general Mark Thompson hit back with an email to all BBC staff in which he said that support of the corporation is growing, citing figures which show 69 per cent of the public now regard the corporation as trustworthy, compared with 60 per cent in 2004.

He accused Murdoch of being “desperately out of touch with what the audience themselves are telling us”.

But at the same time, he gave some ground to the BBC’s critics by admitting: “it is the right time to take a searching look at what the BBC should look like in the post-2012, post-switchover world” and saying he would: “look at how we can help promote the right environment for the creative industries as a whole, an environment in which other media providers can grow and succeed and plurality can flourish”.

HIs comments come as BBC chairman Michael Lyons claimed new research shows that the public don’t want the section of the BBC licence fee allocated to funding digital TV switch-over – which amounts to £130m – diverted to funding broadcast news outside the BBC post 2012.

The BBC is facing a tough fight ahead on several fronts.

On the one hand News Corp, in all probability backed by Associated Newspapers and Telegraph Group, will use their collective clout to call for a scaling back of the BBC’s Online operation to help their websites become profitable.

Meanwhile, Ofcom has to find a way to fund commercial public service broadcasting outside the BBC which will all but disappear without some form of public subsidy and which is becoming increasingly dwarfed by the BBC.

And in the background to all this – the collapse in profitability off regional newspapers is, in many places, leading to a devestating effect on local democracy and community cohesion around the British Isles.

An in-depth feature appearing in the next edition of Press Gazette (October) revisits the Derbyshire town of Long Eaton a year after its paid-for local newspaper closed – and it paints a terrifying picture of what happens to a community which is abandoned by journalism.

While News Corp and others will fight tooth and nail to defend their own commercial position – and the BBC looks set to fight hard against giving up any of its £4.6bn a year licence fee funding – politicians need to look at the wider picture which is a battle for British journalism.

Serious journalism is looking increasingly difficult to fund across the board. But without it, and without plurality, we aren’t just looking at the closure of a few newspapers – we are facing a wholesale collapse in democracy and public accountability in this country.