W/C - 24th October: Weekly Article (14)

Newspaper websites suffer post-Olympic dip as print sales hold steady

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/20/newspaper-website-print-sales

Summary

This article talks of how after the International phenomenon that was the London Olympics 2012, online readership figures for national newspapers took a heavy dip in the interest they received.However, to the surprise of most the printed newspaper industry proved to be on the rise. The rise in circulation of printed newspapers wasn't expected and then raised questions as to what happened to the online side of the newspaper conglomerates which is what many of them heavily rely on to stay afloat as printed papers have taken a massive dip.

Key Statistics

• Double dip decline at the Independent and Daily Star
• The Sun (best digital performer) saw daily average browser numbers drop by just 1.52% month on month to 2.9 million
• Mail Online saw its daily unique browser numbers fall by 3.2% month on month in September to 14.7 million
• The Guardian dipped by 4.65% to 7.9 million 
• The Mirror dropped by 6.65% to 4.9 miliion 
• Telegraph.co.uk reported a 8.79% decline to 4.3 million
• Biggest fallers were Independent.co.uk which dropped by 11% to 3.2 million 
• Express is the second biggest faller down by 9.48% to 1.49 million 
• The third biggest faller was the dailystar.co.uk fell from 26.3% to 710,127
• Print market did better FT, Guardian, Observer and Sunday Times reporting increases in circulation month on month in September from 0.25% at The Guardian to 2.27% at FT.
• Other printed newspapers kept declines to around 1% or less
• Biggest fallers in the print market were Daily Star Sunday by 5.56% and Daily Star by 3.6%

My Opinion

I think that newspapers printed proved to be better post Olympics because they still offered other news stories whereas online in the majority was Olympics focused for a while after the events and did not offer much coverage of other stories for those in the UK. I think that newspapers also proved more successful because people not originating in the UK may have wanted to buy them/collect them for memories of the events.Newspapers were something physical that they could take home whereas online articles would require printing but also change every day.  On the other hand, online was less successful in my opinion because there is no specific audience and therefore it could be said that there are too many needs to be met.