Fairfax broadsheets outperform compacts in first set of data since format shift
Fairfax Media’s remaining metro broadsheets fared better for sales than its new compact titles, the first numbers released by the publisher suggest.
According to data released by Fairfax on the afternoon before Anzac Day, the Sydney Morning Herald’s combined Monday to Friday print and digital paid circulation was down by 17 per cent in March compared to the same time a year before. The SMH’s Saturday edition, which remains in broadsheet format, was only down 14 per cent.
The SMH and The Age shifted to compact format for weekdays on March 4.
Meanwhile the Monday to Friday circulation of The Age, published in Melbourne, declined by four per cent in its first month in compact format, while the Saturday broadsheet’s circulation was actually up by five per cent year-on-year.
Fairfax’s compact Sunday title the Sun-Herald was down by 28 per cent year-on-year. The Sunday Age which is in broadsheet format was down by just eight per cent.
Fairfax said that compared to February, overall sales were up three per cent for the month.
Editorial director Garry Linnell said: “We couldn’t be happier with how the new papers have been received. They continue to do well in surveys among both our most loyal and occasional readers.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Good grief : on those figures they will be lucky to survive beyond 5 years.
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I’m not surprised. I bought the first compact SMH and was very disappointed by the light and frothy journalism. The new layout for the website is great and the compact form of the hard copy a good idea but all it did was draw attention to how lightweight the newspaper has become. I’ve been a daily reader of The Age and later the SMH all my life but after the changing of the formats I realised what I should have realised a long time ago, these newspapers are not worth reading any more. I stopped buying newspapers long ago and have stopped using their websites as my daily news source.
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Looks like the much-vaunted panacea for declining sales – converting to tabloid – has failed. And it’s not surprising. I bought the first compact SMH on launch day hoping they’d improved it and cleansed it of the left wing crap since when I stopped buying it in 2004 for that reason. I saw a revolting cartoon by Moir about illegal asylum seekers showing Tony Abbott with the word HATE written over and over. I resolved not to buy it again.
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Regardless of whether it’s broadsheet or compact, the sales will continue to decline. More people are reading their daily news from other sources. The introduction of metered paywalls will only accelerate Fairfax’s fall.
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Print might be continuing to decline but smh.com.au remains Australia’s most popular news website. Beats all of the News Limited sites. According to the latest research, the SMH app is also the most popular by far. So it’s clear people still want the journalism Fairfax generates – just in digital form
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Indeed those cartoonists in The Age do show bias. Spooner is constantly bagging the PM. Leunig thinks ducks are superior to politicians (he might have a point). And there are others who inconsistently lambaste all sides. You really want media that reflects only your own opinions; saves thinking about issues.
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Small mindedness cuts journalists, standards and last and indeed least, the size. There is still plenty of room for profit from quality reporting, insights and a forum for thought leadership and debate.
The medium isn’t the message here, it’s understanding what the customer will pay for…
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The tabloid switch has rarely worked anywhere. It can work, with liberal use of double trucks, as the Guardian Weekly shows. But Fairfax’s problem is not about design. It is their disdain for the firm’s own knowledge capital. Roger seems to think advice from consultants is worth more than centuries worth production wisdom. That might work in supermarkets, not newspapers. Go back to what Lord Acton said about news and newspapers. Thank heavens I’m not a shareholder.
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Hywood says print is dead. Genius. He also says he has a strategy. I reckon he does not and his only concern is hanging onto his chair. Fairfax has completely lost its sense of purpose and it has to be down to him. Corbett is no more than a supermarket monopolist.
If the nation ends up with no balanced media we know who to thank.
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