At this time of year, the battle for the hearts and minds of newspaper readers moves to the coastal resorts around Britain and Europe. With the help of new technology, circulation departments are increasingly skilled at tracking down their customers to their holiday retreats.
In the past week, for example, the Daily Mail has been printed at satellite plants in Belgium, Marseilles, Valencia, Seville, Tenerife, Majorca, Athens and Orlando, Florida. Some of these plants are also used by their rivals, who share the distribution costs, though Associated Newspapers have more overseas printing facilities than anyone else and are the only group so far to have entered the United States.
Other European cities targeted by British titles are Madrid, Istanbul, Athens and Charleroi. Some of these arrangements are all year round, others just for the summer months. The Guardian is printing in Marseilles from May to September, but in Frankfurt, Madrid and Roubaix in France all the time. The Sun is printing in Marseilles and Nantes from July to September as an experiment.
Matthew Bullard, a circulation executive at News International, says the group monitors the commercial viability of these arrangements very carefully. It isn't, he adds, worth setting up a printing deal with an overseas plant unless a sale of 5,000 can be guaranteed in the area.
Tracy Coyne, distribution manager at The Daily Telegraph, agrees with this figure, but says that costs are coming down all the time. "Not long ago, you would have had to sell 10,000 copies to make it worthwhile. Though it is still fiendishly expensive."The Telegraph has overseas sales of 45,000, representing about 5 per cent of its circulation. The Daily Mail has roughly the same proportion of overseas sales, though in the case of The Sun only about 1.5 per cent of its copies are sold abroad.
At a time of declining newspaper sales, these margins are important. But it isn't just a matter of numbers. The key is maintaining brand loyalty. As Barry Allsopp, the circulation sales manager at the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, puts it: "When readers go away on holiday, they are in a different frame of mind. They are no longer creatures of habit. If their regular paper isn't available, they will try another one, and if they like it they might go on taking it when they get home."
All the newspapers share this concern that their readers are vulnerable while on holiday. Richard Furness, circulation manager at The Guardian, says: "The worst possible scenario would be for one of our readers to pick up a compact - The Times or The Independent - while they were on holiday because The Guardian wasn't there. That would be an own goal. It isn't just a commercial matter; you have a responsibility to your readers to be available where and when they want you." The Guardian sells 35,000 copies overseas.
The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian also publish weekly editions with a mainly overseas sale, but these are aimed at expatriates. Furthermore, The Guardian can be downloaded in New York through a system known as "digital on demand", a technology that is currently very expensive but may be a sign of things to come. The paper first used the technique at the Olympic Games in Sydney. Next year's World Cup in Germany will provide big overseas sales opportunities for all.
Living much of my time in Majorca, I see all the international editions. The papers that do best here are The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, though The Sun and the Daily Mirror may sell more in less decorous parts of the island than mine. On Sundays, The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph offer the biggest packages at €5 and €4.40 respectively. The Sunday Times produces a 96-page tabloid, Culture International, especially for the overseas market, which includes articles from Culture, the colour magazine, Style, Home, Driving, Money, Travel and News Review.
The Mail is virtually the same paper you get in London, with a few Spanish advertisements. The Telegraph has to be printed in two equal sections, which means that the business pages appear at the back of the sports section. It costs €2.90 against €3 for The Times and The Independent, €2.80 for The Guardian, €2 for the Mail, Mirror and Sun, and €1.95 for the Daily Express.
The Guardian includes its feature section, G2, in the overseas package, but The Times and The Independent send no supplements abroad - which means, among other things, that European readers, including me, won't be able to read this.
AN OMISSION from the double-page spread of restaurant critics in this section last week (a fricassee of critics?) was Marina O'Loughlin. The reason was, probably, that she writes for Metro, which isn't generally thought of as a proper newspaper. But she was very close to being chosen as food critic of the year at the British Press Awards. The fact that Metro uses a talented writer like her suggests that the freesheet is moving away from being an agency-rewrite sort of paper into something with a style of its own.
NOW THAT so many senior figures in newspapers and broadcasting are taking the same path as I did - from mainstream journalism into the teaching and study of the media - there may be a chance of doing something I always wanted to do: to give academics some first-hand knowledge of what they write about. A scheme that allowed them a month's experience in a newsroom might go a long way to breaking down the mutual suspicion that exists between the two sides.
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