Newspaper tells its readers: Sorry for losing touch
A newspaper is to take the unprecedented step of launching a full scale advertising campaign to apologise to its readers for its previous poor performance.
The London’s Evening Standard’s first ad – to be emblazoned on buses, tubes and poster sites – will read “Sorry for losing touch”. It will then be followed by “Sorry for being negative”; “Sorry for taking you for granted”; “Sorry for being complacent” and “Sorry for being predictable”, reports Roy Greenslade of the Guardian.
The newspaper was recently sold by the Daily Mail & General Trust – which owns media group DMG in Australia – to Russian proprietor Alexander Lebedev.
The new campaign follows market research into what viewers thought of the newspaper.
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By the way, I should add, that the reader sentiment is probably accurate. It’s been a few years since I worked in the UK, but I remember chatting to a senior member of the commercial team on the Standard.
At the time he was virtually in despair – he couldn’t even persuade the editor that it would be a good idea to come out in favour of bidding for the London Olympics. It took her about a year to come round.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
You got my hopes up with that headline, Tim. I thought it was going to be a backflip from The Australian.
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Sod the Australian.
I thought it was going to be a backflip for all of Australian news media.
Reading the same wire-fed pieces, word-for-word, in both Fairfax and News rags suggests that they have both become low-denominator “lifestyle” news aggregators.
Kerry, Keith and moreover John are spinning like tops.
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To Adgrunt,
I wrote to the SMH about some inaccuracies in an article once. They’re excuse was that they didn’t write it, it was from another service and they were merely showing it in the paper…pathetic.
They should make sure things are correct (to the extent possible) and then at least admit the mistake (I pay THEM for the news, not someone else) and their responsibility for putting it in the paper in the first place.
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Well I hope they intend to follow this up with a “now we are going to get back in touch”, “we will never take you for granted again” campaign or it is simply drawing attention to their flaws! Where is this going? Are they changing the way they run the paper and if so, they would surely be better off telling people how they will be better in the future rather than advertise how crap they have been in the past. What is the good in acknowledging that there is a problem without then being able to offer a solution?
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Please fwd this article to the SMH (actually all Fairfax media) and Channel Nine, and perhaps people will consider buying/watching them again. It’s their only hope.
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Love it.
“Sorry our heads were buried up our own arses because we had an afternoon monopoly in London for so long”
“Sorry London for being London’s anti-London paper … but stuff you still Red Ken, you’re still a goose-stepper”
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Tim, you got my hopes up too. I read it as Wallace Greenslade and was hoping that they could get Neddy Seagoon and Eccles in as editors. Now THAT would be worth reading!
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I can’t believe the Evening Standard is being forced to apologise. Their editor may be hard to persuade about the Olympics but apart from that the reporters are excellent. They do incredible investigative reports, and the Deputy Editor of features, and some of the long-serving reporters are quite genius. Yes, they did have the stranglehold of the evening commuters, but it has always been so, so much better than the rubbish they’re handing out for free on the tube now. I would reckon they’ll have reporters and section editors walking out now, even despite the economy. Imagine being made to apologise for all you’ve been working for…
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