News Limited has been fierce over the years in dealing with newsagents who don’t follow their rules – where newspapers are placed, displaying of posters, advertising their masthead. Year after year they threatened newsagents and sometimes breached them for not following their rules. All the way through they said it was about selling the newspapers by promoting news.
All the rules are gone now as the company scrambles to make as much money as it can from the declining sales of its print product. Case in point – yesterday’s Herald Sun. The headline of the day was covered by an ad for Eureka Report, a media outlet News owns.
A house ad is more important than the lead story of the day in the top selling daily newspaper in Australia. Go figure.
This photo shows how important news is to News Limited today.
How times have changed.
If I was a newspaper publisher I’d be focusing on fresh content, content people want. Content is what makes news or breaks outlets. Disrespect content and you disrespect your product.