Imagining A City Without Its Daily Newspaper by David Folkenflik and published at npr.org invites us imagine what such a city would be like. Folkenflik documents cities around the USA where the local newspaper is in trouble and contemplates how the void left by the closure of a newspaper may be filled.
A question newsagents could ask is what would a newsagency look like without newspapers? I am not advocating this, just asking the question.
Newspapers have strict in-store location rules for many newsagents, they have expensive to manage add-ons and giveaways which are made more challenging by often (but not always) poor execution and they have a cover price (and therefore retailer margin) which has fallen considerably in real terms over the last ten years – a paper which was $1.00 in 1998 is $1.10 today. That 10% increase in cover price is eaten by a 71% increase in rent, a 56% increase in wages and a 30% in other operating costs over the same period – real numbers in one of my newsagencies which I have owned since 1996.
The one benefit of newspapers for a newsagency is traffic. This is falling as the newsagency channel experiences leakage to supermarkets and petrol and convenience outlets and because of newspaper sales falls overall.
So the question is worth contemplating. What would your newsagency look like without newspapers? It may be that through contemplating this question you can see opportunities worth pursuing.
Publishers could contemplate – what would your newspaper look like without newsagents? Not that flash I’d suspect. This is why it surprises me that publishers continue to starve newsagents of fair return on effort.