On Saturday, we woke up to discover that Wall Street had suffered a big fall.
Not only that, but there’d been significant announcements from Google, American Express and Nokia. So for those interested in financial stuff, there was a fair bit to catch up on.
However, The Australian Financial Review, Australia’s “daily” financial paper was on a break – not returning until after Australia Day. An “Australia Day bumper edition” covering January 22-26 will have to suffice.
Now I understand that newspapers have it tough. And there’s not much incentive to Fairfax to publish if newsstands are going to be down and there won’t be many ads.
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But on the odd chance that a regular AFR reader was buying a paper to find out what was going on in the markets, the likelihood is that they picked up a copy of The Australian instead. And found some pretty good coverage inside from its News Corp sister title the Wall Street Journal.
They may even have repeated the pattern on Monday.
Newspapers are about habits.
I suspect that by the time we see the next AFR on Wednesday, a handful more readers may have crossed over to The Oz.
Why do the words death spiral come to mind?
Tim Burrowes