MEDIA & MARKETING:As its star hack takes a hike and despite reader decline, the 'World' is still the market leader, writes SIOBHAN O'CONNELL
CRIME PAYS – or at least it does for Sunday newspapers and journalist Paul Williams. Ireland's highest profile crime reporter was recently poached from the Sunday Worldby the Irish News of the World,and the British tabloid has been shouting from the rooftops about its star signing.
When newspapers trumpet the quality of the editorial roster, the plaudits are usually spread across a number of hacks. With Williams, however, NoW's current advertising splurge is more or less building its entire brand around the scourge of thugs.
Williams's defection from the Independent group to Murdoch's stable was a blow to the Sunday World, which was so upset that the matter was only resolved after High Court proceedings.
However, Worldmanaging director Gerry Lennon may have allowed himself a wry grin when a recent NoWfront-page exclusive by Williams concerned a notorious gangster leaving the country – for cosmetic surgery.
While the pages of the Sunday broadsheets are filled with stories of financial chicanery, gangland crime is the main front-page draw in the red tops. And, like all newspapers in its sector, the Irish News of the Worldcould do with a lift.
The tabloid’s current average weekly sale is 130,000, some way off its peak of 186,000 back in 2003. Readership last year was estimated at 517,000, down 9 per cent year-on-year.
The Sunday Worldhas also been haemorrhaging readers, down 12 per cent last year to 812,000. Despite this decline, the Sunday Worldis the red tops' market leader by a long stretch. Average circulation in the second half of 2009 was 270,000, with sales of 192,000 in the Republic and the balance in the North and overseas.
Lennon says the challenge now for all newspapers is to retain the readers they have rather than recruit new ones. The World's marketing initiatives include advertising on TV every week and sponsoring radio programmes such as Derek Mooney on RTÉ Radio One and Adrian Kennedy's show on FM104 in Dublin.
Having lost their star hack to the News of the World, Lennon and Sunday Worldeditor Colm McGinty have hired two young crime reporters, Niall Donald and Alan Sherry, to fill Williams's shoes. Their brief is to deliver "great investigative journalism" says Lennon.
“Nothing drives newspaper sales like the good old-fashioned exclusive,” he adds.
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ACCORDING TOthe latest property price report published by Daft.ie, price falls in Galway city during the first quarter of 2010 were among the largest in the country. And those falling property prices mean less advertising revenue for local papers such as the Galway Advertiser, which is celebrating its 40th birthday this year.
The newspaper’s managing director, Peter Timmins, acknowledges that its property advertising revenue has declined sharply in the last 18 months. “We did extraordinarily well from property advertising. In the good times we were carrying up to 40 pages of property advertising in an issue. They were the glory days and I don’t see them coming back.”
Some 60,000 copies of the Galway Advertiser are distributed free door to door and through shops and commercial premises each week in Galway city and county.
Timmins says: “At its height, our circulation was 70,000. All media have been badly affected by the downturn and anyone who says otherwise is not telling the truth. We have reduced our pagination from 160 pages to 128 pages. But apart from the property and recruitment ads, our ad revenue is holding up very well.
“Our retail volume of advertising is actually higher than it was this time last year and that’s because of the supermarket war that is going on. The entertainment business is also very strong in Galway and motoring has picked up a little this year too.”
The Galway Advertiserhas expanded aggressively in recent years and now publishes other "Advertiser" editions for Athlone, Kilkenny, Mayo and Mullingar. Latest filed accounts for 2008 show accumulated losses on the balance sheet of €4 million, almost double the previous year's figure.
According to Timmins: “I don’t regret the expansion but I would love to have done it a year or two earlier. The papers are on target and are standing on their own feet. But we would obviously prefer if they were operating in a more buoyant environment. We are not an international newspaper group with millions in the bank. These newspapers have to fund themselves.
“That’s a great discipline because it means you can’t carry losses indefinitely.”
Timmins still sees a bright future for free local newspapers but believes there will be further consolidation.
