Newspapers may be on borrowed time
Delivering the news in print may be in terminal decline, but there are still willing buyers for titles that can see the future, writes STEVE SAMPSON
It’s the old media joke. How do you make a small fortune out of publishing? Start with a big one. After all, nothing sends wealthy power-brokers more insane than a media auction. Dreams of political clout, drinks at Number 10. Rupert Murdoch – the greatest media baron ever – reckons newspapers have 15 years. Jim Mullen, CEO at Reach, owner of The Mirror/The Express and 100 regional newspapers – gives them five. You used to lose readers for one of two reasons – you offended them or they died. That was before the internet.
And yet. There’s no lack of buyers. This week The Daily Telegraph will be bought for £550 million-plus by an American publisher Dovid Efune, owner of the New York Sun – British born, right wing, Trump loyal, pro-Israel Jewish millionaire. His new readers will never have heard of him. The Spectator, a low circulation, low profit political magazine, was bought a fortnight ago for £100m – 33x taxed profit. The Observer is up for sale and will be bought by an Internet start-up.
The prize is subscription. The Telegraph has one million, mostly digital subscribers, delivering consistent monthly revenue, with no costly ink and trees, no off-sale at the newsagent, no costly circulation reps, no loss of sale through the holidays or Christmas. Lovely first party data – publishers now actually know their readers, who are increasingly international.
Nearly half The Telegraph’s subscribers are aged 18-39, which is incredible. The print version costs £2 a day. The Sunday Times costs £4.50 – up 50p this year. Owners no longer care if it’s too much. They would rather have a smaller print sale at a whacking profit. Nobody needs stacks of printing presses costing hundreds of millions. Sack the inkies, Xerox it.
Efune signals a sea change in media ownership where the word “newspaper” will be redundant, only the masthead will survive. Even “newspaper people” don’t buy newspapers anymore. The battleground for your monthly sub is the new circulation war.
The New York Times is miles out in front, targeting 15m subscribers. It paid an eye-watering $550m for The Athletic, a digital sports website with 1m discounted readers. The Wall Street Journal sells 4m, 80% digital only. Murdoch’s London Times has 500,000 digital subscribers with little over 100,000 newspaper buyers – but profitable, whereas its tabloid stablemate The Sun is seriously loss making.
There’s no magic wand as Amazon zillionaire Jeff Bezos has found out at The Washington Post, drowning in $100m a year losses, closing sections, making 250 staff redundant. Bezos sold a lot of books, he now sells a lot fewer newspapers.
The Independent has only good news. It stopped printing the paper eight years ago and will announce profits approaching £5m on £50m turnover. Most interestingly, it has launched Independent TV. High value OTT video is a big part of the future for all media.
For the “popular” press it’s less certain. The Daily Mail throws discounted offers around like a drunk at the races. It thinks TIK TOK is the way forward. Try buying a Mail on Sunday after midday – you can’t, the supply is sold-out with nobody checking.
The Sun sent me an offer this week of £1 for six months – desperate or what? At the Mirror and Express Mullen might be right but Reach has 48m monthly users across its 100+ titles, the biggest publisher you’ve never heard of. The smart play is to create a portfolio-wide brand which joins them into one huge powerful family.
Local media owner Newsquest – whose stable includes The Herald and Evening Times in Glasgow – last month announced 100,000 paid subscribers across the group. A fleabite. The fabled rivers of gold have long since run dry, but it’s a start.
National World – owner of The Scotsman and a clutch of locals – was the losing bidder for The Telegraph. A bit like the under-gardener proposing to the widowed dowager duchess. But chairman David Montgomery was Mirror CEO, a former Murdoch lieutenant, he knows the culture. It’s doing well, have targeted premium video as a growth area on falling circulations. Time to get a move on.
Does any of this matter? Of course, unless you want to get your news from Musk’s X or Instagram. Or be a slave to Google’s algorithm. Are any of them going to hold Starmer and his prematurely sleazy government to account?
Steve Sampson is a former Assistant, Northern and Scottish Editor of The Sun newspaper, and a Director of Trinity Mirror publications. He was a launch presenter of Radio5 Live, founder of First Press Publishing and contributes to the BBC. He is an investor/owner across a series of digital initiatives, and a media adviser. He lists “Diplomacy” as a speciality.
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