28 November 2011

Sunday Times facing the axe?

| johnboy
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Crikey are running a intriguing stubb on increasingly desperate plans to save the Canberra Times.

Canberra Times management are knuckling down to develop a strategy to preserve the storied broadsheet in its current form as circulation and profit plummets.

Newsroom insiders say a brainstorming session at a lakeside Canberra hotel last week discussed several options including moving the paper to a tabloid and the closure of the low-selling Sunday Canberra Times to cut costs.

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creative_canberran5:46 pm 04 Dec 11

I-filed said :

if it incoporated a digest of the week’s Canberra news.

By which time I could have read most of the local issues on RA. Canberra might not have news breaking at the cracking pace of the big cities, but nor are we a sleepy country town. The print medium is dying, they should be investing in a robust online presence.

Canberra doesn’t need a local paper dedicated to both federal and local issues. Fairfax should market the SMH and the Sunday Age to Canberrans with a local insert. I don’t buy the Sunday CT because it’s so thin, but I buy the Sunday Age sporadically and would buy it regularly if it incoporated a digest of the week’s Canberra news.

I’d be sad to see it go, and I mean that.

creative_canberran said :

John Moulis comment on Andrew Leigh’s website:

😀 Rant of the week! Maybe the year.

Here’s an idea – turn it back into a newspaper. Re-hire the people who made the CT a thought-provoking and readable journal.

Just an idea.

The Sunday version is the only edition of the CT that I bother reading. And as for their website, it’s improved but not much.

Little_Green_Bag9:52 am 04 Dec 11

ksanded said :

Simple solution Canberra Times… MAKE IT A MANAGEABLE SIZE!!! You have the capabilities to print in a size that doesn’t require you to wrestle with a newspaper into frustration, (i.e. Sunday Times), make it that size 7 days a week and watch sales skyrocket.

I think it is the most frustrating and annoying things when buying a new kitchen table having to take a copy of the CT along to make sure the table is big enough to be able to read it.

Many people might not know that the CT was actually a tabloid between 1956 and 1964. It became a broadsheet again when bought by Fairfax prior to the launch of The Australian, which was initially based in Canberra.

OpenYourMind said :

I like my Sunday Times. Life is busy. For me, the Sunday Times delivers exactly what I want for a Sunday read over breakfast. A bit of local news with a feature story, some national and international news, real estate news from the day before, investment advice, bit of sport reporting, some letters (usually relating to the feature story), some consumer affairs story…..coffee finished, and I’m ready to start the day.

Investment advice from the Sunday Times?
May I suggest you consult a magic 8 ball instead?

OpenYourMind9:43 am 04 Dec 11

I like my Sunday Times. Life is busy. For me, the Sunday Times delivers exactly what I want for a Sunday read over breakfast. A bit of local news with a feature story, some national and international news, real estate news from the day before, investment advice, bit of sport reporting, some letters (usually relating to the feature story), some consumer affairs story…..coffee finished, and I’m ready to start the day.

Here’s an idea – get rid of the Sunday edition, but instead put more effort into some meaty reading material in the Saturday edition (a la the old National Times). Oh and the population of Canberra is not made up exclusively of retirees so the fact that the columnists in the paper are getting older might be an issue, especially given that I can think of a couple who always write as if they know it all.

Also get rid of that embarrassing property section in the Saturday paper where the ‘real estate writer’ dribbles about how Canberra “identities” are selling their much loved unrenovated piece of crap in the Inner North with $1 mil “expectations”. Makes me want to vomit. Maybe instead do some investigative journalism about exactly how we have got to the point as a country of heaping windfall gains on boomers who bought their Inner North houses for $50k in the 80s.

I agree with some of the criticisms that have been made of the Sunday CT, but in comparison I think it is better than some of the Sunday papers in other Australian cities (for example the Sun Herald or Brisbane’s Sunday Mail).

I like the broadsheet format.

The thing you notice on a Sunday with the Sunday Times, is how little newspaper you are actually getting. Most tabloids are like that.

There are several ways the CT could improve, more local news that isnt just rehashings of govco media releases would be a start. i have found (some of) their journos to be particularly lazy.

Simple solution Canberra Times… MAKE IT A MANAGEABLE SIZE!!! You have the capabilities to print in a size that doesn’t require you to wrestle with a newspaper into frustration, (i.e. Sunday Times), make it that size 7 days a week and watch sales skyrocket.

creative_canberran5:40 pm 28 Nov 11

Waiting For Godot said :

urging a change of editorial policy away from left wing/green nonsense towards a more mainstream, centre Right approach but our pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

John Moulis comment on Andrew Leigh’s website:

“Leigh, you are an absolute tool. A typical left wing academic geek who has never worked a day in his life who joins a political party and has a job for life in a safe seat where the idiots will vote Labor even if Mickey Mouse was the candidate.

You might like to write masturbatory crap about young people and their so-called commitment to the future and belief in so-called climate change, but what about us? Pensioners who are sick and tired of electricity bills going up because of Labor’s renewable energy targets? Too scared to turn on a light because we can’t afford it? Staring down the barrel of not being able to eat because the carbon tax will escalate the cost of everything. ALL TO PLEASE A BUNCH OF GREENIES. All to give wankers like you a warm and fuzzy feeling. I don’t give a flying [OMITTED – DO YOU REALLY NEED TO SWEAR TO MAKE YOUR POINT? ED] about a bunch of naive kids and a mealy-mouthed politician who grovels to this wankery, I care where my next meal will come from, I care about my elderly mother and my aunts and uncles who are being driven to the poorhouse by this green zealotry.

I know that you are the darling of The Canberra Times and other members of the left wing/green set with all this crap you are spouting about climate change, but the vast majority of Australians are screaming out for all this to STOP! For a break from rising prices, for a break from grovelling to The Greens, for an end to air-headed wankery about “saving the planet” and for a break from ignorant tools like you living in a little bubble on the public teat.

I’m counting the days until the next election when you and the rest of your mates will be on the opposition benches and we can completely brush the nightmare of the past year or so. It doesn’t matter what a bunch of bike riding, latte-sipping public servants and their kids north of the lake tell you, there is real anger and hatred brewing towards you and this government in the real Australia, and no amount of “carrotmobs” at Ainslie Shops will ever counter that.”

http://www.andrewleigh.com/blog/?p=1031

Can’t imagine why they’re not listening.

Waiting For Godot said :

I’m not surprised the Sunday CT is being earmarked for closure. They’ve been lifting increased amounts of copy from The Sun Herald, and the weekday edition has been on the decline for several years now. People like myself, John Moulis and others have been writing to the editor and editor at large urging a change of editorial policy away from left wing/green nonsense towards a more mainstream, centre Right approach but our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. They are now paying the price.

Have you guys also written to the News limited papers, asking for them to change their editorial policy away from the ring wing conservative approach to stories and content?

I bet you haven’t!

When our Saturday only subscription came due recently we were offered a too good to refuse discount on a seven day a week subscription – basically getting seven days for the price of two. When we got our first weekday delivery I was shocked at how thin the paper had become. There was nothing in the content that I hadn’t already seen elsewhere. Even the TV guide was still struggling to accommodate the changes that came with digital TV. Needless to say, our seven day a week subscription lasted just one week before we cancelled it completely.

Henry82 said :

focus on quality journalism. see where that takes you.

Quality local journalism even. It’s not like Canberra is a sleepy little hollow where nothing ever happens.

Felix the Cat5:28 pm 28 Nov 11

The Sunday edition is the only one worth reading IMO. I prefer the tabloid size too.

focus on quality journalism. see where that takes you.

I know one thing, they have get rid of “Garfield”. How the writer of that cartoon fed put bread on the table with that crap boggles the mind…

Waiting For Godot4:33 pm 28 Nov 11

I’m not surprised the Sunday CT is being earmarked for closure. They’ve been lifting increased amounts of copy from The Sun Herald, and the weekday edition has been on the decline for several years now. People like myself, John Moulis and others have been writing to the editor and editor at large urging a change of editorial policy away from left wing/green nonsense towards a more mainstream, centre Right approach but our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. They are now paying the price.

2 words.

Jack Waterford.

Gungahlin Al4:12 pm 28 Nov 11

creative_canberran said :

Can you buy Canberra Times on an iPad/online… no.
Can you read the Canberra Times in print on a bus, cafe table or average office desk… no (huge and s-loads of cheap inserts fall all over the place).
Does their website have decent design and content worth monitising… no.
Do they run news you can’t get anywhere else… no.
Do they run special features.

Leaving aside the last of your more pointed remarks, these above sum up the problem pretty well I think.

I hate newspapers in broadsheet format. Tabloid size paper doesn’t turn a paper into “a tabloid”. And just because the day is Sunday doesn’t mean we’ve all forgotten how to read substance.

creative_canberran3:56 pm 28 Nov 11

Can you buy Canberra Times on an iPad/online… no.
Can you read the Canberra Times in print on a bus, cafe table or average office desk… no (huge and s-loads of cheap inserts fall all over the place).
Does their website have decent design and content worth monitising… no.
Do they run news you can’t get anywhere else… no.
Do they run special features… rarely and rarely worth anything then.
Are their editors one sided, arrogant idiots… yes.

Are they relevant anymore… no.

It’s a moribund publication.

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