News of the World: Life after death
Raymond Snoddy: NotW rivals have been accused of missing an open goal but in reality salvaging around two million copies in the middle of the summer and in the current competitive climate facing all newspapers is a respectable performance. But it is now clear that Rupert Murdoch made a spectacular misjudgement when he decided to close down the NotW…
A small miracle for the newspaper industry has worked its magic over the News of the World (NotW). No alas it has not been brought back from the dead but there has been a remarkable example of a sort of life after death.
We all know what happens when a newspaper dies or two newspapers merge and cling to each for dear life. More than half of the circulation simply disappears. Sometimes even more.
Large numbers of the readers shuffle off and are never seen or heard from again. It’s an invariable rule and the historic numbers are there to prove it.
Not quite this time. The good news for the industry is that most of the readers so cruelly and pointlessly abandoned by Rupert Murdoch have bought another newspaper, although frankly, dear reader, nothing currently available on the market is much of a substitute for The Screws. Withdrawal pangs continue.
It’s early days yet and we are hardly out of the promotional/marketing/price cutting battles but last weekend close to two million of the NotW‘s 2.7 million sales were picked up by rivals with the Sunday Mirror leading the charge and bouncing back over the two million mark compared with 1.1 million in the week before the NotW closed.
My own new order was among them. The scandals are not nearly so good but with QPR back in the Premiership decent tabloid football coverage on a Sunday is a vital ingredient.
It looks as if the Daily Star on Sunday is holding onto a rise of more than 400,000 as has the People, according to unofficial industry figures. The Mail on Sunday has had a more modest but still welcome gain of around 300,000.
NotW rivals have been accused of missing an open goal but in reality salvaging around two million copies in the middle of the summer and in the current competitive climate facing all newspapers is a respectable performance.
Yet assuming that all the rivals can do is hold onto what they have now, 700,000 sales have been lost to the national newspaper industry for no particular reason.
For it is now clear that Rupert Murdoch, sitting in New York, made a spectacular misjudgement when he decided to close down the NotW, reportedly on the advice of his son James.
Things were of course very bleak – and the threat of an advertising boycott is a powerful weapon, spurred by a social network campaign.
But what Rupert Murdoch failed to realise was just how fickle, and sometimes temporary, the effect of such campaigns can be. Great for organising instant boycotts or looting sprees but not reason enough to close down a 168-year-old newspaper.
A younger Murdoch would have said “Go To Hell” – though not necessarily in those exact words.
Of course to keep the paper going as a viable option, instant and dramatic action would have had to be taken.
The resignations of all those around at the time at a senior level would have had to have been accepted forthwith. They all had to go eventually anyway so this was simply a Murdoch error of judgement in the first place.
In a piece of rough justice any journalists there during the phone hacking years – not very many by all accounts – would have had to have been purged, the totally innocent included. Decent pay-offs under compromise deals, where no wrong-doing was alleged, would have softened the blow.
With no-one around at any level who had been there when phone-hacking was going on, the paper could have risen from the ashes and fought it’s way forward to respectability over time and with the help of a new tough ethics code on unacceptable reporting skills.
Alas Rupert Murdoch was either panicked by the clamour for blood or foolishly tried to save the neck of Rebekah Brooks, unsuccessfully as it turned out. Murdoch didn’t even get that right.
The tab? A profitable paper that was a British institution has gone and with it 2.7 million sales and 700,000 weekly sales lost to the industry
To make matters worse there doesn’t seem to have been a Plan B. Even if there is an eventual Sun on Sunday, the moment of maximum impact has already long gone. Even if one now appears we who need our Sunday tabloid fix have already made our choice.
A younger Murdoch would have had a Plan B and possibly even a Plan C.
As the squabble over the corpse of the NotW continues there have been a number of interesting developments in the rest of the industry – developments that speak volumes about the pressure newspaper are now facing.
Ashley Highfield, former head of Microsoft’s UK consumer and online businesses and former head of the BBC’s new media and technology division, is to become chief executive of Johnson Press.
Interesting choice. Hope Johnson Press doesn’t go from too little digital to too much.
According to the Sunday Times, a Trinity Mirror investor wants to see merger talks resume with Northcliffe, the regional arm of the Daily Mail and General Trust. Further consolidation in regional newspapers now seems inevitable.
Mecom, the European newspaper group created by David Montgomery, also has a new chief executive following the effective ousting of Montgomery at the beginning of this year.
Tom Toumazis has claimed he has a “brief to build” the group rather than as previously feared break it up. But that leaves David Montgomery still looking for a new newspaper project.
The challenge is obvious. Montgomery, a former NotW editor, should relaunch his old paper like AFC Wimbledon. Give us the old Screws, even if it has to have a variant on the old name, and we would all come rushing back – well lots and lots of us.