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The Forum > Article Comments > The Advertiser's days are few > Comments

The Advertiser's days are few : Comments

By Malcolm King, published 18/9/2014

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), since 2009 the weekday Advertiser has lost 39,818 in sales, the Saturday Advertiser is down 59,978 and the Sunday Mail has plummeted a whopping 74,971.

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AUTHORS NOTE

This story was sent to Crikey, Fairfax, New Matilda and the Drum. All rejected it or never replied.

I do well in placing stories. I take knock backs on the chin but I took exception this time. I’ve been working in the media or allied professions off and on for 20 years and this was a researched story. They must think I came down in the last shower.

I know - and the editors know - that we’re entering the last years of large metropolitan newspapers in Australia. I chose the Advertiser because it has a monopoly, it’s in my home town and I had a source inside editorial.

The effects of the Advertiser closing, reducing its publication to three days a week or being sold, will have a massive and compounding impact on all South Australians, including the business community.

I could have written an article on how the diligent anonymity of the reporter has been traded for opinionated personality at a time when hard, investigative critiques were demanded. But this story is about the future of newspapers – specifically, The Advertiser – not content.

Crikey thought a better story would be on the gate keeping function of the Advertiser. I can guarantee readers that a story that uses research, has insider knowledge and shows the demise of a newspaper in a monopoly market, trumps any other angle.

The Drum said they ‘lost’ the story.

While the media attacks individuals, corporations and politicians with impunity – and then howls when it comes up against privacy or media ownership laws - when it comes to reporting on itself, it’s shockingly timid and fearful. It lacks reflexivity.

The public has a right to know what is happening in the Fourth Estate at a time when the circulation of newspapers is in free fall.

South Australia is heading in to a period of extreme economic turmoil. Its only daily newspaper is in crisis. The ‘Tisers’ online newspaper is floundering yet the media don’t reckon this is a story. God help us but thank God for Opinion Online.
Posted by Malcolm 'Paddy' King, Thursday, 18 September 2014 7:25:01 AM
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It probably would have done. Mr King..

>>I can guarantee readers that a story that uses research, has insider knowledge and shows the demise of a newspaper in a monopoly market, trumps any other angle.<<

Unfortunately, you have diluted this approach with a healthy dose of Opinion.

"It appeared - superficially at least - as liberal, humanist and even handed, but its normative values supported a deeply orthodox political mindset. It patrolled the status quo like a Rottweiler, making it completely unfit to discuss how radical changes such as globalization, deregulation, the rise of Asian manufacturing and online trading, would effect South Australians and especially local business. It slumped from a newspaper of record under the great editorships of Des Colquhoun and Don Riddell, to become mired in parochialism after the News Ltd take over in 1987."

Which makes your offering perfect fodder for Online Opinion.

I expect there will be people who agree with you that the Tiser has become just another piece of Murdoch parrot-cage liner, and others who will protest that it remains a pillar of rectitude, demonstrating decent Australian values.

But you can't blame the editors of Crikey, Fairfax, New Matilda and the Drum for knocking it back - it is simply too long for the Letters page.

I notice that you didn't approach News Ltd. Was there perhaps a reason for this?
Posted by Pericles, Thursday, 18 September 2014 7:59:01 AM
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If you revel in Real Estate or Sports news then they are perfect.
Otherwise a complete waste of money and time.
Just another right wing mouthpiece for Rupert.
Posted by ateday, Thursday, 18 September 2014 8:36:32 AM
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"People need the news. It's as vital to democracy as sunlight is to crops". Aye aye.

I certainly haven't got mine from any NewsCorp publication. Readers know their 'news' is censored and their 'analysis' is biased opinion along the lines of king Murdoch's.

I read several on-line news blogs and other less biased papers such as Guardian, The Week and New York Times. And or course our essential ABC.

Getting news is a bit like investment - best to be diversified. i.e. don't get it from biased monopolies like NewsCorp.
Posted by Roses1, Thursday, 18 September 2014 8:53:52 AM
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Pericles, I wish they had knocked it back because it was too long. See my comment on reflexivity.

This is a business story AND a media story. The Tiser (M-F) page count over the last three years has dropped 15 per cent. There are serious over work problems in editorial. Two section editors are so short staffed, they have trouble putting out their editions. Ads have crashed and the forward projections (newspaper ads) are very poor. They've lost rural and regional readers. Young people have deserted the paper in droves.

My opinion doesn't matter much (last five paras) but those facts as cited in the article are glaring - and the Tiser isn't the worst hit paper. For that, see SMH, the Age and Daily Tele.

The question is who or what will take the Tiser's place in a monopoly market? Or maybe, the Tiser will go it alone as an online newspaper - but see in article how difficult that is to do from the newspaper model. The article raises more questions than answers, I'm afraid.

You're right. I could have tried News Corp. I could have also tried to join the Bandito bikie gang but I didn't think - rightly - that I would be accepted. Lovely chaps they may be.
Posted by Malcolm 'Paddy' King, Thursday, 18 September 2014 8:57:12 AM
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Which comes first?
Is circulation dropping because advertising is falling or VV?
Posted by ateday, Thursday, 18 September 2014 9:04:50 AM
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The newspapers, especially Murdoch, have no-one to blame but themselves, and we'll be well rid of them.
Their "Lowest Common Denominator" approach has cost them dearly, most intelligent people see the rag for what it is, toilet paper, and won't waste money on it, and the lesser lights amongst us simply DON'T buy newspapers as a rule, so the editors have shot themselves in BOTH feet.
Too, unless the TV mob learn from that lesson they too are doomed, their endless sensationalism and biased "reporting" is wrecking their customer base just as effectively as the print media has done.
Posted by G'dayBruce, Thursday, 18 September 2014 11:11:43 AM
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If you say so Malcolm.
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Thursday, 18 September 2014 12:02:19 PM
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Ateday, correct, we still wonder why we buy the Advertiser, the only pages worth reading are "letters to the Editor" and "deaths" because we are in that age group.
Being a Murdoch paper it is very right wing and the truth or a different opinion is never told, thank goodness for sites that do hilite different aspects of truth online.
There is too much sport, pages and pages of it, these end up in the bin as soon as the Advertiser is received, we do not want to read day after day of people we are not interested in such as Corby, Warne, Royal family etc, Gee; I hate to think of day after day of reading about the old girl when she pegs out, it will definately will be time to cancel then.
Give us the truth on all subjects editors then we will continue buying the Advertiser, but pigs might fly before then, me thinks
Posted by Ojnab, Thursday, 18 September 2014 2:33:43 PM
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Nobody, as far as I know, uttered one word of public protest or concern about the gradual decline and eventual closure of nearly all the second-hand record stores in Australia, followed by the decline and closure of stores selling new CDs, followed by the decline and closure of stores selling software on CDs, followed by the ongoing decline and closure of video game stores. A major change in the Sydney and Melbourne streetscape has been completely ignored -- though people have lost their jobs and a good many friendly and familiar places ceased to exist. But technology must be served.

Let a similar decline face a journalistic enterprise, however, and suddenly it's supposed to be important news! Ho hum...

Looking at the Advertiser web page this morning, the only unique piece of news I can see is that a football coach has been sacked. There are FOUR stories on this, and another one on football in general. What a waste of my electrons!

Goodbye newspapers! Don't slam the door on your way out.
Posted by Jon J, Friday, 19 September 2014 6:58:46 AM
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Jon J you are of course correct to point out that technology such as audiovisual has changed several times in our lifetimes. When old industries go under the employees simply have to adapt and find new jobs, as most of have done several times in our working lives.

But it's worth contemplating how journalists will be paid in future when the traditional print news withers completely. World news agencies, which have the role of primary purpose is to promptly report world news people need to know, are indispensable. For example, Reuters, Bloombergs in the US and also Al Jazeera. Government funded radio/TV such as the ABC in Aus. and community-sponsored independent news radio 'franchises' such as NPR in the US also fulfill this role on a national level.

Analysis and wider in depth reporting of issues is well provided by the better quality online news blogs e.g. The Conversation, Business Spectator, Renew Economy and Crikey. They use expert non-paid analysts in addition to a small staff of paid journos. But someone still has to pay for providing this information service.

So I think the ethical way is to subscribe to at least one such organization - I choose Crikey and The Australia Institute. Blogs like OLO also provide valuable fora and deserve our financial support as long as they remain impartial and well-run. If we refuse to pay even a little for good information and analysis, all we get is commercial/propaganda junk.

As for newspapers I find the small, dense, ad-free papers such as 'The Week' and 'Guardian Weekly' are the way to go. I hope a community group is set up to sponsor putting these in coffee lounges, thus providing alternatives to 'The Australian' propaganda rag.

I agree that the ad and sport packed propaganda broadsheets are dying and the sooner they go the better.
Posted by Roses1, Friday, 19 September 2014 8:38:48 AM
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