I love old newspapers. They provide a direct and very physical connection with the past.
Here’s a City editorial from a 1940s edition of The Evening Standard that I bought at the weekend. Its striking because the article could have been written yesterday.
Quick blog post in response to news from Northcliffe House this morning.
The London Evening Standard is to go free from 12 October. Brand Republic says so.
At a time when newspaper circulation figures are in decline and the industry is grabbling to figure out how to generate income from online content it makes no sense whatsoever.
MD Andrew Mullins signals a change of business model. He says that it will up its circulation from 200,000 to 600,000.
“Being a quality newspaper with large scale and reach should transform our commercial fortunes.”
Presumably this is in a bid to bring back high spending advertisers and bulk up classified ads. But I can’t see the revenues being sufficient to turn a profit.
I’m going to dig up the numbers over the weekend but the only way I can see this working is if it Russian owner Alexander Lebedev is prepared to bank roll the Evening Standard through the turmoil in medialand.
But that’s not a new business model. It’s vanity publishing.
Update: The FT’s Ben Fenton has more detail to the Evening Standard announcement and the background to the London media landscape.
Strictly Come Dancing judges and participants have been gagged over the Arlene Phillips affair according to reports today in the mainstream media.
The Evening Standard reports tonight that a “secret memo” issued by the BBC tackles difficult issues of the age and gender of the former judge.
What complete and utter nonsense. Everyone in PR will have recognised the memorandum is a media Q&A. It is a standard tactic used a briefing document for anyone that has to face the media.
Q&As are typically tedious documents drafted to ensure that all spokespeople stick to the script and are prepared for tricky questions from the media.
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