I STILL DON'T LIKE IT
My impression of Daily Xpress hasn't changed with today's second edition. Okay, so I am three years older than the top end of their 25-35 target group, plus I am English and not Thai so I guess it doesn't really matter what I think. I'm just speaking with close to 18 years experience in the media, and a far degree of knowledge about what works and what doesn't. I am going to avoid calling this new publication a newspaper because it's not. Think of The Daily Sport and The Daily Star in the UK but without the news. I think you can see where they're going from the first front pages, and there is nothing much in the way of news inside at all. Sport is three pages whereas at least The Nation in its former existence had a reasonable amount of sport. Now there's nothing at all in there. The first announcement back in December promised 72-pages. Already that's down to 48.
I really have got nothing against Nation Multimedia and I even sent them a good luck message and gift on behalf of my company. I really do wish them well on the launch of Thailand's first free English language gossip and lifestyle publication.
3 comments:
48 pages isn't as many as the promised 72, but it's still not too bad for a free publication. Can you imagine publishing a 72-page freesheet every day?
I think it's a bit harsh to say it's like the Daily Star or Daily Sport without the news. Those two UK papers are full of T&A. The Xpress is a few rungs above them, I think.
I agree about the lack of actual news in it, and the fact that some stories are a day out of date. The same is true of Newsline, the English-langauge news show on channel 11.
Matthew,
Thanks for your comments. I agree that 48-pages is pretty good and is also more than the likes of Metro and the London Paper in the UK. But 72 pages were promised when the official announcement was made and I was wondering what happened? And I really do doubt their claim to distribute 100,000 copies per day. The fact is that no one knows for sure except for Nation Group and the printer, and you can be sure they'll keep those details pretty secret.
The news content, certainly in Friday's edition, is heading in the right direction. I hope it works for them but I still have some serious doubts. Only time will tell.
I haven't been too impressed with it yet, mostly because it's just wire stories and ads. There's not much news, which is a shame because The Nation is now a business newspaper apparently. What happened to politics?
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