The most striking aspect of the new Sunday Business is how it is so different from its predecessor and so much like the FT. Obviously the pink paper has a lot to answer for, but bigger, bolder headlines and text and a more restricted use of colour photos give the impression that this is a serious business newspaper for a serious reader. The ‘first’ Sunday Business, on the other hand, often gave the impression of a populist business newspaper aiming at mass market appeal.
Yesterday’s launch however is unashamedly more focused on the City and is not afraid to get its hands dirty with the “drier” side of business news. For example, much use is made of pie charts and line charts and a couple of news items on page three relate to Russian oil and a British chemicals firm.
The titles of the pages also reflect a more focused approach with each page getting its own heading, much in the same way as the Independent. For example, there are a couple of “City” pages, a focus on “Railways in Crisis”, “UK Business” and then foreign pages devoted to each region, such as Europe, America and the Pacific.
In terms of design the style of font is similar to the previous Sunday Business, though the layout of features is much more like the FT – smaller articles in a more crowded page – than the spacious feature-type pieces which are now run more often in other broadsheets.
The paper also now contains only one other section rather than the over-ambitious five which its predecessor ran when it first launched. Business Life is in contrast to the main paper, being concerned with wining, dining, fashion and the arts as well as sport, economics and the markets.
The wisdom of this second section remains to be seen. With a cover-price of 50p the new Sunday Business appears to be positioning itself as an additional buy for Sunday broadsheet purchasers. Whether or not this is the case, Business Life merely covers the same ground as, for example, a combination of the Sunday Telegraph‘s Review and Business sections.
Overall, however, Sunday Business looks and reads like a serious broadsheet which is aiming to genuinely provide something different to that which already exists in the Sunday broadsheet market. Importantly, it carries an air of authority and strength which is difficult to create in any new title.
The main broadsheet contains 24 pages and advertisers include British Airways, Demon Internet, Encyclopaedia Brittanica and Easy Jet while Business Life ran ads for Tower Records, Japan Airlines and Standard Life in its 24 pages.
Sunday Business: 0171 468 9600
