Canberra Times circulation

BTW – Kerces, my earlier comment (“it can’t be any worse…”) wasn’t supposed to sound like quite such a backhanded compliment. You’re a substantially better writer than Shanahan. And probably most of the CT “journos”, many of whom can’t string together a coherent…um…now what was the word…

Sentence! Yeah, that’s it…

Lol Mr Shab, I think around the countryside if you mentioned that you were writing for the ACT’s 3rd best blog, they’d get it. RA has for a long time been superior to third place, and definetly is the place to get news and opinions across faster than any other canberra media source. (Although the ‘3rd best blog’ title is surprisingly descriptive and emotive, and inspires recognition due to its obscurity).

I think last time I mentioned that Kerces did a better job at being a reporter than the CT reporters, she politely informed me that the CT was waaayyy underneath her capabilities – I think Sydney was mentioned…

(Speaking of the Vietnamese issue, there have some developments, try googling your RA name and check it out if you were involved – although since I still can’t read Vietnamese I haven’t been able to determine what the Viet community have been talking about)

Bottom line is that the CT needs to branch out and do some independent work, and to stop cutting and pasting everybody elses stuff.

And no, that doesn’t mean more pictures of horses from Queanbeyan.

i recall the excellent riotact interviews of a year or so back. we’d sub,it questions and then the subject du jour woul answer them.

we should start that up again.

i nominate: vicki dunne, kate lundy, mary porter, faye powell, terry snow, someone from the anti-gaol people in qbn, daniel mcfadden, anu singh etc etc.

plenty to choose from.

Well – I’d be interested in reading what you’ve got to write (it can’t be any worse than Angela Shanahan).

If you want interviews with MLAs, just tell them you’re writing for the ACT’s 3rd best blog. How could they refuse?

Mr Shab, being the journalism student I am, I thought if people are actually interested in reading more original stuff that might motivate me to go out and find some (especially given this’ll be the last year I have the luxury).

The next question of course is will the name RiotACT hold as much sway in being able to get interviews with MLAs and the like as the CT or ABC? I can but hope…

silly silly CT not valuing the content providers. Ben Doherty’s a rare piece of local talent actually able to go out and find stories.

More Marcus Mannheim and Helen Musa then?

CT’s losing another somewhat experienced journalist, by the way. Ben Doherty’s off to The Age. Sure to be replaced by another journalistic newcomer.

Kerces – more original journalism would be ace, but who’s going to do it? That was an actual question by the way – not rhetorical. Get out and journalise you journalistic things!

Sorry – won’t be me though. I just like to rant and slag other people’s arguements 😉

Ok, straw poll of those reading this thread:

Would you like to see more original journalism on RA, for example interviews on the topics of the day rather than rehashing of press releases?

There’s no “real” news in Canberra – just the tabloid BS – or so we are told by the CT.

I’d rather read RiotAct and online newspapers. I sometimes buy the Saturday CT but most of the time it isn’t worth it.

yup – we got our freebie in Rivett a month or so ago. I don’t think I even unwrapped the plastic…

It’s a mystery why Rural Press have let the paper go the way it has. This is the national capital for heaven’s sake – 300,000 people leading interesting lives in a place with a territory governemt chamber and where the national Parliament influences the rest of the nation. Is there really no local news, no local well-reasoned analysis available daily?? Why is is that only the Saturday edition could be called a decent read?

I run a business here and I have to say that the advertorial policy -from a businesses viewpoint – is bloody marvellous. if you can string 400 more or less coherent words together with a picture, it’ll get published. It’s an advertiser’s wet dream. As a reader.. well, I stopped my sub 8 months back. I read the national papers online during the week, and get the Saturday edition for the opinion, analysis and culture. I just don’t get much Canberra NEWS anymore.

All I get ‘free’ is the Chronicle and – once in a blue moon – the City News. Not only do they clog my letterbox (thus keeping phone/elec/gas/water bills out – handy), they make the ‘Crimes’ look like high-end literature.
Which it isn’t. But I do like the ‘Panorama’ section on Sats, I think it beats the Oz ‘Review’ by some way…

Never mind if it was a horse I’d shoot it. If it was a newspaper I’d read it. It’s neither. We do get it every day, more out of habit than anything else and I often wonder if it’s worth it. A focus on local events (past and upcoming) and critical analysis of local politics would help.

Not only is it becoming increasingly more tabloidy, but often it just regurges the same wire articles i can access online.

the analysis of local issues is sorely lacking, and when it is there its flimsy. i still get the weekend edition out of hope more than anything and of course for the few act journos id read; crispin hull, ian warden, shanahans wine column. the book reviews are usually sound.

angela shanahan is a right wing jesus freak, too many articles are journalism by press release and the volume of news is decreasing. take the sunday times for example. 32 pieces of paper a few weeks ago. and why the insert obsession with hollywood stars ?

if it was a horse you’d shoot it.

if they put a few more journos on, who had experience and printed more local news i might get it during the week as well.

I got my ‘complimentary copy’ here in Banks around a month ago now, so you’re not the only one.

When I told the last CT telemarketer who called me that I wasn’t interested because I thought the paper had turned into a tabloid rag since Rural Press took over, she didn’t seem that surprised to hear it. I suspect I wasn’t the first to make such an observation.

Yep. Quite seriously, I consider the RiotACT to be better source of local news than the Canberra Times in most cases.

From Crikey

Crikey reporter Jane Nethercote writes:

What’s going on at The Canberra Times? The Rural Press-owned paper’s downward spiral has continued unabated over the last six-month circulation period (to December 2005) released last week.

Circulation was down at least 3% on all editions from the same period the year before (-3.17% Monday-Friday, -3.08% Saturday, -3.55% Sunday). Only The Courier-Mail was on a par, with a 3.49% circulation drop in its Saturday edition.

Canberra Times general manager Lloyd Whish Wilson was reported in his own paper on Saturday that circulation figures over the period had been adversely affected by a number of one-off factors, including the installation of new publishing equipment, which apparently caused delivery delays over an extended period and lost sales.

Maybe. But losing slabs of circulation is hardly a recent phenomenon at the Times (for figures since 1999, see here). Staffers must yearn for the halcyon days of 2000 when the same six-month period was up at least 5% on current figures (+7.91% Monday-Friday, +5.23% Saturday, +6.84% Sunday).

One of the reasons for the decline, one former staffer tells Crikey, is that the Times “does not tend to hire people with metro experience – they cost too much.” “When experienced people have gone they are replaced by very inexperienced ones, few of whom are from Canberra…and it shows.” And the editor, Michael Stevens, “while having some good news sense, is very provincial in his outlook”.

Other problems cited by insiders include Rural Press management’s lack of trust in the paper’s journalists, lowest common denominator journalism, “dubious ethics”, an increasingly blurred line between editorial and advertorial and mass exodus of experienced staff – when Rural Press bought the paper in 1998, “the new management made it clear the Old Guard was not welcome. Waterford was kicked upstairs, given a grandiose title, and deprived of all influence”, says one former staffer.

There’s “community dismay with the paper” which now “reads like a paper put together by outsiders”, says a Canberra media insider. While circulation figures have always been relatively small, the paper is a “boutique broadsheet with a very sophisticated audience” and its “influence is huge”.

But does the paper’s steadily declining circulation suggest that a growing number of Canberrans are looking elsewhere for their news?