APN to close freesheets and cut frequency of historic daily papers
Two of Australia’s oldest newspapers will no longer be published daily following a series of cost-cutting moves by regional publisher APN.
Tweed’s 123-year-old Daily News and the 104-year-old Coffs Coast Advocate will both move to reduced frequency, while free titles the Gold Coast Mail and Robina Mail will be closed in a move that will lead to 35 redundancies.
In the latest set of Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, the Daily News was selling just 3,689 copies. The paper started life in 1888 as the Tweed and Brunswick Advocate. It became The Tweed Daily in 1914. At one point it was one of only two daily newspapers in Australia to have an offset printing press.
Instead the Daily News will sell a print edition only at the weekends with a cover price of 50 cents instead of the current $1.30. It will go on offering readers online updates via the mydailynews across the week.
APN is also to axe two of its southern Gold Coast freesheets. The 28,000 circulation Gold Coast Mail – which originated as the Gold Coast Hinterlander in 1977 – and 24,000 circulation Robina Mail – which only launched in April this year – will both close at the end of the year.
However, the free weekly Tweed Border Mail will continue to be distributed during the week to 30,000 households in the Tweed/ Coolangatta/ Murwillumbah region.
APN has also swung the axe in the Coffs Coast market with the 104-year-old daily Coffs Coast Advocate, which covers the NSW mid north coast, becoming a twice weekly freesheet, circulating on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On its paid for days it had been averaging 2,959 sales.
Ina statement, Warren Bright, CEO of APN Australian Regional Media said: “In each of these markets, although the audience for paid daily newspapers has been declining there remains very strong demand from both advertisers and the community for the twice weekly newspapers that we are retaining.
“We also have strong digital audiences in each market so it makes sense to combine a constantly updated digital news service with this modified print offering.”
APN said there were no further plans to make closures in its other markets.
November 22 update: APN’s former head of online Hugh Martin, who now runs data service Crown Content has predicted: “Taken in isolation, the future of APN’s Tweed and Coffs businesses is bleak. The next round of closure – my guess probably some time in the middle of next year – will be final.”
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If they can’t sell a daily in a market like the Gold Coast, it’s only a matter of time until Rural Press dailies like the Sunshine Coast Daily follow their lead.
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Duncan: The Sunshine Coast Daily is an APN title too.
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The Gold Coast market is dominated by Murdoch’s Gold Coast Bulletin. Whereas the Sunshine Coast Daily’s market position is relatively uncontested.
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So how many regional dailies does that leave in NSW? Haven’t looked for a while but would I be right in guessing Newcastle, Wollongong, Lismore, Wagga and Dubbo?
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The Gold Coast market is unique, and completely dominated by the Murdoch press. Unfortunately, APN do not know how to compete within a market where they do not hold the dominant hand.
APN also do not really understand how to interweave their products into the fabric of the community they serve. Each of their papers up the Qld coast (including Sunshine Coast) do not serve each area well, as they carry only minimal true local news pages, and only have token involvement in their individual communities.
All you need is an active, aggressive player to come into areas such as Bundaberg, Gladstone, Rocky, Mackay etc, and you will see more APN papers fall.
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Anyone who has followed The Tweed Daily News over the decades will be surprised that it lasted this long. Duncan’s post misunderstands the two very different Tweed/Gold Coast franchises. News Ltd understands the Gold Coast very well. Ron is correct is saying that APN understands Queensland markets very badly. Shared content ain’t the way to be a local paper.
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I wonder how many regional QLD titles the last 2 posters have read recently? there is a huge amount of original local content in each masthead, particularly when you consider that regional tv has cut its journalistic resources on the ground so drastically, and regional radio DJs can regularly be heard leafing through their local paper each morning on air. Regional papers still write the largest number of original local stories of any medium and now do so online all day every day. As for news ltd undesrtanding the gold coast, mmm not sure that business is as rosy as they would have us believe.
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Yep Ron Aldo, I have been reading a couple of APN dailies on almost a daily basis, for close on 50 years. Yes, they do have local news, certainly more than competing media in each regional area. But, the slant on local content tends to be sensationalised. They do not carry much of what one would call “parish pump” type news, which is the actual skeleton of any community. Take a look at profitable free weeklies. They are full of this “parish pump”. They get right down to the nitty gritty of what makes the region tick. They do not put much attention on the rapes, assualts, sex exposures, crime, etc etc. It certainly makes reporting boring, but this “pump” is what readers want. And, I have got to say, I have seen a dramatic drop in the quality of news content, and quality of writing within the APN papers over those 50 years.
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Why skip over all the possible legitimate criticisms of APN, and go with one that has no basis in fact?
With the exception of the World News pages and where we distribute seperate editions in one region (Ipswich’s “Satellites”, for example), the content is overwhelmingly local, and produced by local journalists and photographers. That’s what APN does. And while we may not do some things too well, I reckon we’re doing alright at this.
Disclosure: APN employee, obviously.
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