Digital highlights from Northcliffe presentation

Posted by Martin Stabe on 12 October 2007 at 10:00
Tags: Associated Northcliffe Digital, Journalism, Northcliffe

Northcliffe Media’s investor briefing to the Cityearlier this week made for some very interesting reading.

NMG managing director Michael Pelosi said: “We must deliver local audiences if we are to achieve profitable revenue growth. Digital publishing has a key role to play here.”

Meanwhile, the company also announced this week that Associated Northcliffe Digital is being reorganised to hand control over web sites back to individual newspaper titles’ editors and managing directors.

The slideshow PDF and full transcript (DOC) are on the DMGT web site. But if you don’t want to wade through all of that, we’ve done it for you:

• DMGT’s strategy is to invest in media businesses where long term growth is achievable, both in consumer and B2B sectors. In the consumer sector, Pelosi said, “we will be investing to develop their digital businesses”.
• In Britain, the company’s aim is to “meet user needs with multiple platforms”. In the long term, its “regional diversity and flexible media formats crate resilient business model”
• Online editorial control has been decentralised, Pelosi said: “All local editorial departments are now at the heart of online publishing. In the past, it was handled centrally. Breaking news online was not something which local centres could do easily. That has all changed.”
• Each Northcliffe centre is now an “Integrated Local Media Publisher” that “thinks print and on-line”. In their integrated newsrooms, there is “editorial control over on-line publishing”
• There are “no restrictions on news appearing on-line first” and “stories are broken when they are ready and not to suit print deadlines”.
• New features are coming to ThisIs sites, Pelosi said: “we are building new community areas, which should be ready later this year“.
• Traffic at thisisGloucestershire spiked heavily to a peak of more than 35,000 unique visitors per day during the July flood as it kept readers up to date with vital information, like where to find drinking water. Traffic has not subsided to pre-flood levels. The site now routinely has upwards of 10,000 unique users on weekdays.
• Intellitracker data shows unique visitors across the ThisIs sites in September 2007 were up 42 per cent year on year to around 2.5 million.
• This integrated approach also extends to sales teams, who take a “combined print and on-line approach”.
• Digital revenues are up 77 per cent year-on-year; however “ink-on-paper products … still deliver 95% of all advertising revenues”.
• Print accounts for 90 per cent of recruitment revenues, with online-only accounting for just 1 per cent, digital up-sells accounting for 7 per cent and CV matching for 2 per cent.
• Finance Director Martyn Hindley: “Advertisers are only interested only in the effectiveness of the solution to provide them with quality applications, not the split in revenue between print and digital products.”
• Northcliffe is converting free online property listings to paid-for ads, but digital revenues in the property sector are “small”.

Another area of the presentation that will interest journalists is its discussion of the Aim Higher cost reduction programme, which “delivered savings of £45m“, with the largest slice coming from £9.5m editorial cuts. Headcount was reduced from 6,809 to 5,058 in the three years to September.

Martyn Hindley, Northcliffe’s Finance Director, insisted this had not affected quality:

Editorial contributed the largest element of the savings. Again the emphasis was on process, not content. We shield away from any cost reduction activity that we believed would have impacted on quality, particularly on our local news gathering operations. Indeed, in the South West we actually bought in-house our photographic operations.

P&J owns TheAberdeenPaper.com

Posted by Martin Stabe on 5 October 2006 at 15:09
Tags: Aberdeen Press & Journal, Journalism, thelondonpaper

If News International ever use the domain names they have purchased to launch freesheets in cities across Britain, they may have to come up with a new name in the north of Scotland.

TheAberdeenPaper.com is already registered, but not by News International. Aberdeen Journals, the DC Thomson division that publishes the Aberdeen Press & Journal, got there first, registering the domain on 14 September, ten days after thelondonpaper launched.

News International registered thelondonpaper.com back in February and the other city domain names on 31 March.

More Northcliffe titles on the block?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 15 March 2006 at 12:39
Tags: Aberdeen Press & Journal, Archant, Johnston Press, Kent and Sussex Courier, Newsquest, Northcliffe, Trinity Mirror

Daily Mail and General Trust may be looking to sell more of its Northcliffe regional newspapers, the Daily Telegraph reports.

The Kent and Sussex Courier is reported to be on the block, with possible suitors including Trinity Mirror and Gannett the American parent of the Newsquest group.

After pulling the entire Northcliffe group off the market last month after attracting lower-than-expected bids, DMGT is also rumoured to be flogging the Press & Journal in Aberdeen, stoking the idea that it is looking to break up its regional newspaper group.

Johnston Press, Gannett, Trinity Mirror and Archant are all reported to be interested in the Scottish broadsheet.

Across the Northcliffe group, advertising revenue was down 7 per cent in the five months to February, according to a DMGT trading update released today.

DMGT digital revenues soar while print ads slump

Posted by Martin Stabe on 15 March 2006 at 12:23
Tags: Associated Newspapers, Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Mail on Sunday, Metro, Northcliffe, Online, Teletext

Increased digital advertising revenue was the silver lining in a trading update released by Daily Mail and General Trust today showing slumping ad revenue at both Northcliffe and Associated Newspapers.

Over the five months to February, digital advertising revenues at DMGT’s regional newspaper group, Northcliffe, soared by 17 per cent compared with the same period last year, while advertising overall slumped by 7 per cent.

At Associated Newspapers, which includes the Daily Mail Mail on Sunday, London’s Evening Standard and Metro, there was a similar pattern. The papers’ display advertising revenues fell by 10 per cent; classified advertising revenues were down 11 per cent — but digital advertising revenue was up 43 per cent. That includes revenue from Associated New Media’s online classified advertising sites Jobsite, Find a Property and the recently-acquired Prime Location.

Bring on Craig Newmark’s tanks.

Newsquest hack vents after payday change

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 March 2006 at 11:27
Tags: Journalism, Newsquest, Northcliffe, Regionals

At least one current Newsquest staffer is unimpressed by his employers’ decision to change payday without consultation. “Stevie D” from Blackpool writes:

On Friday, with no warning, I and my dwindling band of colleagues were called to an ‘urgent’ announcement at the head office of our local Newsquest Ffiefdom. Several people, myself inclued, were told that their positions were to dissapear. We don’t even get the pay-off that comes with redundancy - we just get another job, in another town, more than likely on a lower wage.

Stevie isn’t a big fan of regional newspapers generally, it seems:

You’ve probably never heard of Johnston Press, Newsquest, Trinity-Mirror or Northcliffe but the chances are that one of these massive companies produces at least one newspaper in your home town

It’s probably a pretty scraggy effort. A few stories about cats, perhaps the scantest and most uncritical look at what the people you voted in to run your local council are up to. A sports page, probably something grim about crime on the front.

It will make a big song and dance about its ‘community role’ but when you phone up asking for a photographer to cover an important community event you’ll probably discover that he the one snapper left is shared with two or three other publications. Ask for a reporter and you’ll discover there is only one and they are chained to their desk writing an advertising supplement to raise a little more revenue. Ask to speak to the editor and you’ll probably discover they are based 30 miles away and also handle four other newspapers.

Stevie says journalists axed from Northcliffe papers shown that regional newspaper journalists can now start up their own titles fairly easily, pointing to the Cheltenham-based Compact and the Clifton Chronicle. Stevie clearly doesn’t plan to stick around very long himself: He’s busy writing up a business plan.

Weekend news roundup

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 March 2006 at 10:41
Tags: Aberdeen Press & Journal, Economist, Guardian, Independent on Sunday, International, Ireland, Johnston Press, Journalism, New Statesman, Northcliffe, Observer, Sportsman, Sunday Telegraph, TakeSport

We trawl the weekend papers and web sites so you don’t have to:

The Business identifies Andy Stewart, a founder of brokers Collins Stewart Tullets, as the final investor in the Sportsman. Spencer is thought to have invested £1m for less than a 10 per cent stake. The other shareholders in the sports and betting daily that is launching on 22 March include Michael Spencer, Ben and Zac Goldsmith, Ben Arbib and Max Aitken. Staff on the new paper will own a 10 percent share.

The Sportsman will face additional competition in the form of a 64-page free weekly sports betting magazine which launched on Friday. Backed by entrepeneur Chris Akers, TakeSport distributed 30,000 copies at rail and Underground stations in London, the Independent reports.

The wonderful blog Regret the Error, which carefully scrutinises the corrections columns, spots an interesting item that ran in the Guardian on Friday. Nothing to do with the “headline of the week” on Press Gazette’s Page 28 the previous day, I’m sure.

In Saturday’s Telegraph, Roy Greenslade speaks to outgoing Economist editor Bill Emmott, and serves up comments by former New Statesman editor Peter Wilby criticising the sober magazine newspaper as “almost stifling in its monotonal certainties and infuriating in the arrogance of its judgments”.

Emmott, on whose watch the Economist has doubled its circulation to upwards of 1 milion, gets his jabs in: “I guess a sniping response would be that if I wanted advice from someone who ran a failing magazine I’d ask for it. More seriously, it is a blinkered interpretation of why people read the magazine.”

Bookmakers Paddy Power consider Ed Carr a “dead cert” to replace Emmott in the editor’s chair, but that doesn’t stop the speculation in the diary columns. The media diary in the Independent on Sunday suggests former deputy Clive Crook, now at the Atlantic Monthly in America but still penning paeans to the Economist, is a leading external candidate at tomorrow’s interviews. “If successful, Crook would be the first person from without the ranks of the Economist to take the top job in its 160-year history,” the Sindy notes. Elsewhere in the paper, though, diarist Christopher Silvester reckons Economist US editor John Mickethwaith turned down the Spectator chair because he had been promised the top job at his own place.

The Sindy also goes after the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail, asking “Have Middle England’s best-loved papers lost the plot?” Sources close to deposed Sunday Telegraph editor Sarah Sands say she’s furious for being “fired for carrying out the brief she had been given”, noting that under her leadership, circulation rose from 666,031 before she arrived last May to 683,741 last month.

As for Daily Mail and General Trust, the Sindy notes that its regional Northcliffe division made £102m on revenues of £520m. That 20 per cent margin compares unfavourably to the 34.5 per cent at regional rival Johnston Press and 35 per cent at Gannett. Plans for staff cuts at Northcliffe are expected to be unveilled this week.

According to the Sunday Times, meanwhile, reports that DMGT is considering selling off the Aberdeen Press & Journal for £120m. The Sunday Times says DGMT is negotiating with Johnston Press and at least one other potential buyer, a sale could happen “within the next few weeks”.

An advert for a highly-paid post as a Department of Health speechwriter that appeared in Press Gazette raised eyebrows at the Times. At £56,000 per annum for the part time post, the paper calculates, the right applicant could expect to trouser more than George W. Bush’s chief wordsmith, the paper calculates. Well, not quite:

However, the department said last night that an error had been made when drawing up the job details. It said that the actual salary would be a pro rata payment, and the speechwriter could expect to earn between £18,000 and £26,000 a year.

“[T]here probably isn’t enough money in the world to pay someone for the thankless task of defending Britain’s monumentally incompetent health system,” notes one former Republican speechwriter, Rodger Morrow. Still, British blogger Tim Worstall has already applied.

The Polski Herald is an eight-page Polish-language suppliment that is included in Dublin’s Evening Herald every Friday. The Observer quotes its news editor, Tom Galvin, urging British news papers to follow his paper’s example of reaching out to immigrant communities: “I would say to fellow journalists in Britain, especially in those areas where there are large new immigrant communities like the Poles, that this is the way to increase and build a new readership. There is a real and very new market out there.”

Fifty years in Dorking

Posted by Martin Stabe on 10 March 2006 at 10:29
Tags: Dorking and Leatherhead Advertiser, Journalism, Northcliffe, Trinity Mirror

Greta Morley has been at the Dorking and Leatherhead Advertiser for half a century.

Morley, now a grandmother-of-five, started on the paper as a 17-year-old in 1954 under then-editor Bill Williams. She moved to Northcliffe newspapers on Fleet Street in 1957, but returned to Dorking two years later to edit a Woman’s Page. In the 1970s, she became features editor and in 1987 became the first woman to be editor of The Advertiser. She retired in 1996, but has continued to contribute to the paper, producing its Yesteryear section with another long-serving employee, Maureen Lewington.

Regional press needs an image boost

Posted by Sarah Lagan on 23 February 2006 at 16:15
Tags: Northcliffe, Regionals

Raymond Snoddy deliberates on the regional press’s battered reputation following DMGT’s failed attempt to sell off Northcliffe Newspapers.

This week in Press Gazette

Posted by Martin Stabe on 23 February 2006 at 13:14
Tags: Awards, BBC, Economist, Five, Kent Messenger, Magazines, News of the World, Newspapers, Northcliffe, Online, Relaunches

This week’s Press Gazette magazine is out now. Some highlights:

• BBC News 24 have just won News Channel of the Year from Royal Television Society Journalism Awards — and that’s before the Beeb added high-profile presenters Huw Edwards, Emily Maitlis, and Ben Brown to the rolling news channel’s presenting team.
• The News of the World is still in the running to defend its title as Newspaper of the Year, but is losing its picture editor.
• “Relaunch man” Roger Borrell questions the value of relaunches.
• Former lads’ mags editor James Brown talks about newspapers, publishing and being single.
• Northcliffe journalists are still on a knife edge after Dail Mail and General Trust pulled the plug on the proposed sale of the regional group.
• The Kent Messenger launches a video bulletin on its web site.
• The European Commission plans to set up its own television station because it is unhappy with TV coverage of European issues and .
• A journalist may be crucified as part of a documentary he is making to rediscover his faith.
• Bill Emmott talks to us after resigning as editor of the Economist.

The ABC consumer magazine circulation figures are out. We have all the stories about How free titles, including supermarket magazines dominate the top of the consumer circulation league tables, plus the state of competition among current affairs magazines, home magazines, “real life” magazines, listings titles, celebrity magazines, teen mags, music rags, lads’ mags and the glossies.

Goldman Sachs: Northcliffe valuations were ‘very rich’

Posted by Martin Stabe on 22 February 2006 at 11:05
Tags: Newsquest, Northcliffe

A new report by an investment bank says Gannett was lucky not to have acquired Northcliffe newspapers, Editor & Publisher reports.

Goldman Sachs says the American newspaper group, which owns the Newsquest regionals in the UK and was one of the bidders for Northcliffe, was fortunate that Daily Mail and Gerneral Trust decided to withdraw the sale. Given the reported pricetag of £1.3 to £1.5 billion, the bank’s report says, “we are happy that Gannett did not ‘win’ this asset, as these valuations are very rich, even in the context of potential synergies.”

Goldman Sachs now expects Gannett to be cautious as it turns its acquisitive attention to the American chain Knight Ridder, which has also been on the auction block.