It is an ill wind that blows no-one any good, and in the context of
11 September and this week's air attacks on Afghanistan, it's worth
noting that one of the few beneficiaries of global turmoil is the
newspaper industry.
As the September ABCs published this Friday will show, the papers have
had a "good war" so far. Clearly they all put on a huge increase in
sales on 12 September - although the ones that did best were those with
the nerve to up their print runs as high as they could go. Those that
were cautious in printing extra copies - mindful perhaps they lose money
on the cover price - lost out in sales terms.
The real interest, however, is in the period from 12 September to the
end of the month because it shows the extent to which the sales uplift
has been sustained, if at all, and if irregular readers have been
converted.
While the editorial coverage has been without exception outstanding,
there are two clear winners in sales terms. As I understand it The
Guardian's ABC will be up some 10 per cent for September at 440,000.
Insofar as anything is predictable today, you would expect the
broadsheets, equipped with legions of specialist writers and a mission
to explain, to have done best. The surprise package, however, is the
Daily Mail, whose ABC will be some 8 per cent up at close on 2.6
million, up by nearly 190,000.
(I should add that the Daily Star also recorded an astonishing 12 per
cent jump in circulation in September. I don't wish to take anything
away from a remarkable revival, but I think that has more do to with its
full-on focus on football than its insightful analysis of the man it now
calls, for headline purposes only, "Bin".)
As far as the Daily Mail and The Guardian are concerned, however, both
now appear to occupy that enviable position of being the papers that
non- or occasional readers turn to when occasion demands. Of the other
dailies, The Sun and The Mirror are believed to be down 5 per cent and
1.5 per cent respectively. I'm not surprised by either, although you
have to wonder whether The Mirror's relatively better performance can be
explained by the fact that its coverage of the crisis was altogether
more serious.
At the Daily Express, meanwhile, they must wonder why they get up in the
morning. Even in the best month for sales since Diana's death, it
recorded a decline of some 60,000 - a 250,000 sales differential with
the Daily Mail. Enough said.
It is often said that newspapers succeed when TV cannot deliver the
pictures. Yet here we had vivid and visceral wall-to-wall TV coverage of
the tragedy, and sales still rose dramatically. It's too simplistic to
say that advertisers should take advantage of higher circulations, but
anybody who thinks the newspaper medium has had its day should think
again.
- Claire Beale is away.
