GOOD FOR BUSINESS, BAD FOR READERS
Tuesday's edition of The Bangkok Post will have sold very few impulse-buy copies on the strength of what essentially was a strong news day. The reason? A cover wrap.
These four-page advertising supplements are pretty common with both English language dailies, and with my publisher hat on they are extremely valuable sources of revenue. At a guess I would say that a cover wrap on The Bangkok Post would generate at least 300,000 baht - possibly more - and that's revenue you simply cannot ignore.
As a reader and a journalist I hate cover wraps, and I cannot help but feel they diminish the value of news.
3 comments:
My feeling is that bkkpost doesnt really bother so much with counter sales. Their main sales channel is subscribtion.
With virtually no competition (only 2 english dailies) they can get away with anything they like... including a horrible website.
I find it kinda amusing that bkkpost's website get far more traffic than nation's
Hi Sajal,
Counter sales are 15,513 whereas subscriptions are 20,434 and bulk sales (airlines, hotels, etc) are 25,535. That data is from the independent audit statement for average daily rales during the second half of last year.
In terms of the websites I agree. The Bangkok Post has almost nothing additional to what appears in the print edition wheras at least The Nation is reasonably regularly updated with news throughout the day.
I think the disparity in website hits is because the Post is more globally recognised.
In the old days, news headlines convinced people to buy newspapers (and the advertisements). Looks to me like what happens when sorry-ass managers who don't know the first thing about journalism start running everything.
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