Media
THE AGE OF VESUVIUS: Newspaper in its death throes only has itself to blame
The Age newspaper’s decline to just over the critical 200,000 daily circulation number suggests its print edition will be out of business in a matter of years, according to advertising industry experts.
They say the new monument to indulgence – The Age’s new multi-million dollar office – will soon end up being the Pompeii of publishing killed by the molten lava of technological change.
Its business model – completely dependent on classifieds – has failed. It is now desperately hoping to cling on to its once-loyal inner-city readership. They’re walking away too, mainly as a response to declining standards caused by cutbacks made necessary from a collapse in classifieds ads.
The left-leaning newspaper has turned itself into a niche product, with only a few bright spots including the profitable Green Guide easily able to be swallowed up by the Herald Sun, which despite a global slowdown in newspaper ads and sales appear to be going from strength to strength.
An Age observer explained these numbers to VEXNEWS:
These are easily one of the worst sets of figures The Age has ever posted. They have just scraped over the all important 200,000 figure for the Mon-Fri edition, and they will be very hard pressed to sustain even this figure in the Dec quarter given how tight their financial situation is.
Once they settle below 200,000 copies for any length of time nobody really knows what will happen to their business. It might continue on regardless, or strange and spectacular things might start happening. It’s a bit like what happened at Chernobyl. The engineers wanted to see what happened if they left the cooling rods out for just a few seconds longer than the safety manual recommends…
And then there’s the Saturday Age. 284,500 is just dreadful, given that 2 years ago, the Saturday Age was consistently selling around 320,000 copies every week. This quarter they threw everything at it – CD giveaways, a bag, a free chockie, you name it, and still it is in freefall.
Overall it’s an ordinary set of numbers across the market, although the Herald Sun is going well, with the top 8 performing papers all being in the News Ltd stable. You’d also have to say that newspapers in Australia are out-performing US newspapers by a country mile. Oh, except for Stock and Land, down an ominous 27%.
UPDATE: Normally The Age will print a story about the latest circulation numbers in their business section. It’s not like they were scooped, the numbers are apparently sent confidentially to the newspapers ahead of an embargo at Sunday midnight. Clearly they don’t like reading bad news about themselves.
Discussion
35 comments for “THE AGE OF VESUVIUS: Newspaper in its death throes only has itself to blame”
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Your cheering over the slow death of The Age seems odd given if it really did fold you’d have almost nothing to write about…
Memo to Fairfax Board: It’s all about the content, stupid.
Fox? Hun? Tele? Sky in the UK?
Anything registering here?
Some people want to read anti-Australian, anti-Western, maudlin oh-I’m-so-sorry, extremist enviro, feminazi crap.
But most don’t.
Change you ways, or its ‘end of days’.
LOL, we’d soldier on, I promise.
Perhaps the real problem with the Age recewntly has been Boofhead’s
right wing mate Ronnie GP Walker.
Now that he is gone it will pick up again. It is certainly bettewr than the HUN
I do think VEX that your analogy of the Age and Mt Vesuvius is just plain wrong – that implies some kind of grand explosion.
It would be more apt to describe the demise of the Age as akin to that of the Democrats – a slow torturious strangulation to naught.
What will i read whilst eating my organic muesli in the morning?
Terrible figures, the end is nigh.
I just hope i can get a job at the ABC.
Tiresome, irrelevant tripe that is wrong!
Has anyone got the mobile number for Fielding’s Scout Master?
Fairfax is losing over a million bucks of cash a day, a lot of it seeping out through the open sores at Spring St. Their new Chairman Corbett is a retail man, knows sod all about the media but he does know when the stench from the stale fruit and veg dept is driving the punters away. Take a look at their last 100 front pages: disgraceful shite. In any normal business this bunch would have been kicked to death by the shareholders.
Come on Steve Fielding Name the Scout Master and have him prosecuted.
All scout masters are tainted until he is scouted sorry outed.
The closure of The Age shoppe by the obnoxious Brian McCarthy means that we can’t get Fairfax newspapers except on line, and the on line version often doesn’t contain the full story. For example the Sunraysia Daily. You just can’t get it in Melbourne since the closure of McGills and Robert Doyle is as uninterested in the matter as McCarthy is. Neither of the two wholesale newsagents, Flinders City News or Ledermans, are interested in supplying city retail newsagents, and Fairfax will not deal direct. A disgrace.
You are correct Andrew. Fairfax can blame themselves for not promoting their products. It’s bye bye Walker but McCarthy is a bigger obstacle to the Fairfax brand.
And here’s Jason Whittaker, jack of all trades master of none.
Remind us why you don’t have a real job in the media?
Fielding again you have proved you are a publicity seeking half wit just like Les Twentyman. Just because the media won’t be interested in dumb arse & insigificant you, over the next 2 weeks with the ETS and today’s Apology. It is a pity the Scout Master didn’t slit your throat after he had used you.
Do you know which auction company will be handling the liquidation sale?
I am a Boy Scout Master.
The new Fairfax building is reminiscent to Area 61.
Is Brian McCarthy an alien?
What happens in the Boy Scout Troop stays in the Boy Scout Troop.
The new Fairfax building is reminiscent to Area 61.
Is Brian McCarthy an alien??
Not suprised the Herald sun is popular. As a gossip paper, little valuable editorial news and aiming for the bottom end of the market (that is the trying not to think to hard majority)it suits a community who try not to to be to informed in case they learn something!
I noticed a neighbour’s home-delivery Age on the footpath this morning. It was about the same diameter as a broom stick.
[deleted]
[deleted]
Steve Fielding might have let the cat outa the bag?
Are there any readers of this site who are not obsessed with gay male sex?
It seems no matter what the topic of the latest Vex News story, some original wit will hilariously impersonate someone and comment on their sexuality.
It’s an article about Age circulation figures and it turns into a forum on who is gay, who acts gay and the rest.
Who fucking cares?
And the comment about Fielding is just pathetic and disgusting.
This is a political blog not an opportunity for hate-filled vilification. Go start you own shit sheet you neanderthal fuckheads.
[deleted] is statistically more like to be a child abuser himself.
“It is widely believed that boys who are victims of sexual abuse become abusers themselves. Studies of pedophiles suggest this often is the case.”
I’m one of those inner city types who used to be a loyal reader of The Age, until it turned into only a slightly better dressed version of the Herald Sun.
The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was The Age’s reporting of the swine flu. The hysterical fear-mongering day after day was a complete insult to my intelligence. Anyone with half a brain could see swine flu was not the catastrophe The Age was trying to make it out to be.
For me, that was the point when I realized The Age not only doesn’t care about reporting truth, but has no respect for its readers. If only they had separated themselves from the tabloid pack and delivered us a true reflection of the issue.
Anyway, since then I migrated completely to alternative media and only very rarely check The Age online, only to be disappointed yet again.
Just about everyone in my circle of friends and colleagues have given up on The Age, and in many ways it is very sad because Melbourne would only be worse off if all we had was the Herald Sun.
In saying that, I would only return to The Age if they tried to differentiate themselves from the Herald Sun by providing genuinely thoughtful reporting and analysis that doesn’t insult their reader’s intelligence.
Just look at the latest breaking news from Age Online:
* Boy drowns on school excursion
* Port Melbourne couple’s drink-drive hat trick
* Hippo shot in outback
* Taxi driver bashed after pre-pay fare row
* Deceptive real estate agent wins jail-term cut
It’s mind numbing.
Personally, I want to read about our changing world. Among this, I want to be inspired with innovative ideas for tackling economic and social problems we face. I want to understand why the GFC occurred and how we can learn from it so we can make the world better in the future, all without analysis being filtered through a “protect-corporate-interests” sieve.
I really do hope The Age transforms itself into something that recaptures its once loyal readers. If not, then the alternative media will be the biggest winners of all. I guess that’s a good thing too.
Laig Crangdon is a great Scout Master. He taught me everything I know.
My Scout Master was called ‘Skip’ his ream name was Ron Boswell.
I wish I was a boy scout.
If “The Age” folds, it will be a great pity. I usually rely on it for credible information as to what’s happening inside the ALP.
But I suppose if the Spencer Street Branch of the ALP folds, I’ll have to rely on the Southbank Branch, the ABC, for my information – it’s almost as reliable for ALP information as “The Age”.
Cheers,
Observer.
Moving away from all the emotion, put simply The Age doesn’t have a great business model.
They have two forms of income.
1 selling the paper – this is quite miniscule these days as they effectively give the paper away. I pay around 21 cents a newspaper as a Palais member to receive the paper 4 days a week 52 weeks a year from Thursday to Sunday. Delivery and newsagents fee alone would be more than 21c a paper let alone the cost of producing the paper. MFC members and numerous other groups can get this similar deal.
2 Advertsing – if I want a job or wish to hire someone I go to Seek.com
If I wish to buy a car or sell a car I go to drive.com.
If I wish to buy, lease or sell a house or commercial property I go to realestate.com or realcommercial.com.
So the two forms of income are being decimated at either end..and the product they sell, “news” they offer for free online. Of course if they start charging for it people who currently get their news from theage.com.au will simply get their news from other sources IE Ninemsn, ABC etc.
Whoever they got to do the photoshop work on Tricky Nicky McKenzie’s new profile pic should get an instant battlefield Golden Quim. More please!
The truth is the decline started long before the current regime. Hilmer simply didn’t understand that media was shifting online and the revolution that would follow. As a result they lost significant non-news revenue opportunities at the same time as revenue from traditional sources declined. This of course resulted in a lack of resources to hire good journo’s and the truth is that in the modern age where anyone can post a view, its good journalism that sets an outlet apart from the rest. This of course is a problem for all of Fairfax and not just The Age. It potentially also reflects that media institutions run by institutional shareholders that have no real feel for news will constantly look for financials to be improved through savings whereas what Fairfax really needs is no dividend for a year or two and a massive reinvestment in quality journalists.
I still get the Age home delivered – why I don’t know. All you city folk get an updated paper on your doorstep at 7am. The one I get is printed at 7 the night before and is so far out of date by the time I get it it isn’t funny. The problem with the Age is simple – they have got it back to front. All newspapers need to abide by three simple rules (1) Local (2) National (3) International. At the Age it’s (1) International (2) National and (3) local (if you are lucky)
Their is little difference in the news reported by most of the newspapers, it comes out of the same sources. What different is the analysis by the reporters? To keep readers, newspapers today have to build up their reporters into superstars. The Age is not keeping those superstars.
But before anyone gets too doom and gloomy about newsapapers and the industry in Australia it supports checkout the article and discussion here.
http://www.posbrowser.com.au/b2evolution.new/blogs/index.php/2009/11/05/doom-and-gloom-merchants-are-annoying?blog=3