AFR closes daily ‘Information’ section, launches weekly tech pull-out
The Australian Financial Review has closed its long-running daily tech section ‘Information’ as speculation mounts that the Fairfax title is undergoing a major overhaul to rejuvenate the newspaper.
The AFR was the last publisher in Australia to publish a daily technology news page, and will instead publish a weekly pull-out supplement called Technology.
The move comes just weeks after the Financial Review Group called time on technology title MIS Magazine, citing falling tech advertising as the reason for the closure.
The eight-page supplement will be edited by Paul Smith. It will be first published on Tuesday 28 February.
Technology stories will be broken on the paper’s website, afr.com.au, with more features-length content running in the print pull-out.
Smith told Mumbrella: “It’s fair to say that technology advertising has declined. But that’s not the main reason we’re launching the Technology lift-out.”
“Technology news is now mainstream. Often the best tech stories are on the cover of the newspaper. So it made sense to, rather than run a technology page every day, publish a special section once a week.”
“This move is not about the disappearance of our daily technology coverage, it’s more a rebranding to keep us relevant and fresh.”
Rumours are circulating that a similar approach may be taken to the paper’s Financial Services section, with further changes to the rest of the paper in the pipeline.
The AFR had not commented on the rumours as Mumbrella went to press.
Paul Smith here, just a note to add that the technology coverage on the AFR website has been moved outside the paywall – and is free for all.
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Great news Paul, best of luck with the new section
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How does Tech coverage moving from daily to weekly equate to “relevant and fresh”?
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It doesn’t necessarilly come across that way in the write up, but I am keen to stress that the AFR is not dropping daily technology coverage, it will just not have a dedicated daily technology page in print.
Most of our best daily technology stories have been running in the National or business pages for some time now, so by the time readers got to the technology page itself we had already fired most of our big guns!
We will still be breaking tech stories daily in the national and business pages, and also really increasing our online efforts of course.
The Tuesday section will be the one day of the week when we can keep all the best tech stories for our own section …. as well as going more in depth with longer articles and columns than we could fit in before.
The relevant and fresh quote in the article was in response to a question about whether it was sad to kill off the “Information” brand, and I was simply saying that we could have called the new liftout “Information” if we wanted, but it seemed a bit dated and overly generic (there is information on every page of the paper!)
I’m sure some of the fine minds out there could have come up with something more earth-shattering than “Technology” …. but at least it does what it says on the tin, and is consistent with how we are branding ourselves online.
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Good luck with it paul. Will John Davidson’s column still get a run in the new weekly section? Or will that go online?
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Makes sense to me. The Technology news gains following and importance in many minds every day.
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Yep, John’s column will still appear every Tuesday, but he is now also appearing much more frequently with a Digital Life blog on the technology page of the website as well. http://www.afr.com/technology since you so kindly asked me a Dorothy Dixer!
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They need to have the AFR on the SMH iPad app asap.
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