A colleague asked me to pose a question here, related to the photo below of a shopper docket from Woolworths. Why do we continue to sell newspapers?
There is no doubt that print is not a model for the future distribution of access to news or long form journalism. The only barrier to its closure today is the lack of a viable alternative mad revenue model for the publishing companies.
That said, plenty have transitioned to digital, some with good success.
These deals like at Woolworths are all about slowing the sales decline, to bowler ad value in the print product.
I made $9.00 selling newspapers on Saturday, if they closed tomorrow, I wouldn’t notice a thing. Oh, and traffic booster? I don’t think so, more than 80% of paper sales are sold alone
Brett nailed it and the lack of comments about this prove it, newsagent dont care about newspapers anymore. The revenue doesn’t cover the costs and they dont boost traffic.
Theres a new 24hr servo opening a km up the road from me next week. They came an asked about subbing papers, a few years ago I would have done it but now I told them to go direct supply from the publisher, I dont want to know nor do I care.