In a move that has surprised pretty much nobody (and their dog), Trinity Mirror has announced that they’re shutting down their “New Day” newspaper. It took just 10 short weeks for them to come to a conclusion the rest of us came to at the beggining: that it wouldn’t work. Here’s why.
.At a time that more and more people are getting their news online, Trinity Mirror launched New Day as an attempt to reach out to people who weren’t traditional newspaper buyers by writing short, catchy news stories on paper.
Basically, they tried to print blogs.
It’s that old chestnut of not understanding your audience. People who read the type of content New Day was producing already get that kind of content online for free. With the majority of commuters now packing smartphones or tablets, that free content is now with them 24/7.
To sell that snappy free content for 20p, without links or video or any other element of media people now demand, was always going to be a hard sell.
Their target audience – younger, millennial readers wanting insightful, snappy content – read Huffington Post or subscribe to Buzzfeed. Putting the text element of that into print, without the additional media, is a backwards step for that audience.
Charging for it is even worse.
But we’re talking about a print news company. That’s what they know: print news. And that’s what they’re trying to save.
But to do so, you must know your audience. And if your audience has changed, go where they’ve gone: change with them.
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Tim Austin runs Wing Copywriting and Public Speaking. His computer keeps telling him that his Outlook Settings are Out Of Date. His computer can go ****.
