Out With A Bang

The trials and tribulations of the Guardian Media Group’s provincial ‘wing’ – be it either the Manchester Evening News or the Reading Evening Post – have long been of interest.

If only cos you kind of presumed that within that arena might be folk who ‘get’ it more than most.

In fact, there’s no ‘might’. Some clearly do.

And with no shareholders to keep in dividends – only The Guardian and The Observer to keep ’safe’ in the lasting spirit of The Scott Trust – so their actions may be more ‘pure’ of web economic heart than one or two others.

They haven’t got anyone to kid; just the NUJ to infuriate as the MEN and the Reading Ev Post are cast as the necessary sacrificial lambs if The Guardian news room is not to be, likewise, led to the slaughter.

Anyway, this is interesting… how the new-look Reading Evening Post is going to ‘fit’ into the news-reading lives of Reading folk.

http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/wire/5129

It will, it appears, be a weekly; published on a Wednesday… with a GetReading half-sister to appear on a Friday. Like many an other provincial city title in this country, the ‘Evening’ bit will be quietly dropped. It is now the Reading Weekly Post, price 40p.

For the usual reasons, I look at all these events through the eyes of a provincial football network; particularly one where the money is – The Championship. Now, of course, boosted by the arrival of both Newcastle United and Middlesbrough to its illustrious ranks.

Because what fascinates me is what sort of instructions that the Post’s football writer is now going to be working under and when, exactly, it’s weekly print deadline times are if it is to be published on a Wednesday.

Cos I’ve been there. I cut my teeth on the weekly Wiltshire Gazette & Herald…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=200

Print deadlines 2-5pm on a Wednesday, depending on which of the six editions was off the stone first… which, at least, made a Tuesday night game at The County Ground [home of Swindon Town FC...] possible.

Say, for example, you’ve got a weekly print deadline time of 5pm on a Tuesday night, that means that there will be no Reading match report from the Tuesday night in the following morning’s paper.

Perhaps they’ll hold a few ’slip’ pages back till 11pm; I’ve no idea what their printing arrangements are; whether it will still be printed in Reading or ‘out-sourced’ somewhere else along the Thames Valley.

But if the weekly Post doesn’t manage to get a Royals match report in on a Wednesday – and the vast majority of Championship mid-week games are on a Tuesday – then that is one large section of your audience who won’t be buying the Post any more in the hope of reading a match report from the game the night before…

What do you put on the back page? Preview quotes? A holding piece that makes no mention of the game that evening? Close your eyes and hope that no-one notices?

And when am I supposed to now read my Saturday match report from the Royals writer that I have grown to trust and recognise – on a Wednesday?

Clearly the GetReading website will be fed with reports and quotes pieces; but the more that premium content is channelled in that direction, the less and less reason I have to buy the Post on a Wednesday.

None of this is rocket science; it’s simple, straight-forward logic – serving two masters, one of whom demands content onto the palm of his hand in nigh-on an instant and the other that wants the best stuff tucked away from prying eyes until the middle of the week, grows ever more impossible.

Now, what happens if someone builds an elegant network across ‘your’ Championship patch in the not-unreasonable hope that you might be able to find a higher buyer for fresh, syndicated, sticky Championship content?

What am I going to do then as GMG? Join that particular party? Or, say, ‘No, we’re keeping the best manager’s quotes for Wednesday…’?

It’s the same problem that will hit anyone seeking to work with the weekly MK Citizen re MK Dons content; that as much as we talk about geographical silos being wholly at odds with the DNA-driven networks of the Web, so too you can see silos in a time and deadline sense – hiding content away until it comes time for you to print a weekly paper doesn’t work either.

Chances are that same, premium content will have ‘hit the streets’ days earlier be it either via the club’s own website or that of the BBC who – now armed with their own Football League TV rights deal come the start of next season – will be churning out the written content like there’s no tomorrow from the MailBox every Sunday.

Mix n’ Match it with your spliced and diced video feeds; coming to an embedded iPlayer near you.

Because unlike large chunks of the UK provincial newspaper industry, Auntie works on a Sunday and wrecks many ‘an exclusive’ come the Monday morning. Or Wednesday morning in The Post’s case.

These are the realities on the ground. And the punters aren’t daft. They know the gates into your ‘walled garden’; they can sniff fresh content a mile off; they can equally smell what’s old and whiffy.

Like a Wednesday newspaper with no Tuesday night match report in it.

Interesting times.

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