报纸业的新一轮出击

报纸业的新一轮出击

　早在1972年，每十个澳大利亚人中，年龄在18岁拥有表决权的和30岁以下人中，就有5位年龄介于18至29岁的人表示，他们每天都阅读报纸。而今天，这个数字已变为1：5，专家说这个数字将在2010年下降到1：10。
编辑对出版商：我们有一个问题
针对全世界的青年读者群进行的“战役”正在谋划，讨论和关键性的试验当阶段。这场战斗并不轻松：年轻人拒绝与日常的报纸进行“交战”，他们对阅读没有多少兴趣。这是因为受互联网中提供的扣人心弦的图片，电脑，游戏以及电视的诱惑吗？亦或是他们对新闻就没有任何兴趣－他们对那些内容枯燥，说教性质的东西越来越感到乏味，对外界漠不关心？
或者两者兼而有之，或许是与其它因素相结合而综合作用的结果？
不管答案是什么，问题的确存在。一项对1991年至2002年澳大利亚Morgan读者倾向性所做的调查显示，年轻的报纸读者们的数量占读者总人数的比例正在稳步地下降，尤其是介于14至24岁年龄段的人数。在过去的十年间，周一到周五的读者降低了30%，周六为16%，周日为11%。
25－34岁和35－44岁的人群当中，平时报纸读者的流失量为19%。这两个年龄段在周六的读者流失率极为接近，为5%和4%。

令人高兴的是25－34岁的周日读者人数保持稳定，而且35－44岁读者还增加了12%。
面对这个全球基本相似的数字，来自伦敦，墨尔本和芝加哥的英文报纸的出版商们正密切观注着事态的发展，并在寻求“争取日益衰退的年轻读者的兴趣”的良方。
英国联合报业的《伦敦都会报》是最成熟的具有时尚风格的出版物，它于1999年为抵制由Swedish Modern Times Group创办的《地铁报》而克隆发行出版的。
过去《每日邮报》的发行商处于领先地位，而如今《地铁报》发行量达82.5万份，运往伦敦，曼彻斯特，伯明翰，纽卡斯尔，格拉斯哥以及爱丁堡，它与市场中年龄在44岁以下的77%的年轻办公人员有着紧密的联系，其中有81%的在职者通常很难有机会与经销商打交道，即便如此，目前它还是处于赢利之中。
在墨尔本，News Limited's Herald与Weekly Times出版了MX，这是一份充满活力并且色彩艳丽的小报，每个下午免费发行9万份。MX剔除了对早报的竞争－由Fairfax出版的《墨尔本快报》，在第一年里，它恰到好处地把握住丰富的市场目标（年轻人），约有68%的读者年龄在34岁以下，有超过一半的人是全职工作者。MX在上周为它的第二个周年纪念进行了庆祝，尽管还在亏损，但很快就能看到收益。
在芝加哥，作为本地市场的先锋，《芝加哥论谈》在去年十月已经预备了一个名为Red Eye作为其分枝的报纸，其对手《太阳时代报》为与其相针锋相对，开办了针对年轻人的名为Red Streak的新报纸，直到今天，虽然已经撕下了“年轻人至上”的标签，但他们仍然在一决高下。看来，在芝加哥他们将网罗任何一位读者成为其观众。
Herald Sun的主编Peter Blunden说，MX并非是在国外的一个克隆产物，但是越来越多的机会将会填补市场的缺口，而且试验性的出版计划将触及年轻读者的心弦，使他们为之心动。
他将MX定义为一份不把自己弄得过于真诚的报纸，远离阴暗和死亡，热衷于让人捧腹的小故事，不必假装成一份记录性报纸，始终触及流行文化，不惧怕冒险行为。
“如果给予年轻人以挑战的机会，他们的所作所为将会是让人感到震惊的事。” Blunden说，“这样做没什么不好。”
MX是一份完全准备就绪的报纸，25位编辑当中有13位是助理编辑，他们的工作就是将六位记者的报导或一些非传统的原始资料去粗取精，并进行删减，小的修改以及润色。
编辑Mark Gardy说：“我们希望它快捷而显而易见。我们希望它的日常新闻轻松，欢快，积极和谐而且信息广博。至于我们的晚间读者－我们提供电视中的有价值的信息，电影讯息以及在哪有最好的酒吧。”
“在这里没有评论，没有领导者，没有演讲。最重要的是我们无需对读者们进行说教，因为他们无需接受说教。”
评论家们在Salon.com中写文章，认为他们夸张且并不令人兴奋，Jack Shafer说：“有关这两份报的消息，评论越少越好。在糟糕与最糟之间，还是应该有一个嬴家的。”
Joe Knowles告诉媒体：“我们迫切想要吸引年轻读者，所以我们不一再为18－34岁的人群谋划些什么了，让读者们自己来决定Red Eye是否适合他们。”
“我们在有关于流行文化方面的文章和新闻中更倾向于年轻人的视角，因为那些文章有助于将我们与Tribune相区分，Tribune用很大的篇幅刊登有关于美术，爵士乐，戏剧等的信息。但我们不想被想象成像Kiddie Trib或是Tribune。我们不愿意被看成是让人施舍的，虚伪的，忧心忡忡的乞怜者。这痤城市的人们的清楚地知道－如果你试图变得冷漠，那么只有死亡。人们的感觉十分敏锐，他们很快就能察觉到。”

   
报纸业的新一轮出击 　
Knowles现在将他的报纸定义为为那些没有时间享用全套服务的读者们提供的报纸，并且希望以此能吸引年轻读者，越多越好。
自从创办之初，Gardy和Knowles都认为要在编辑这个核心环节精益求精。Gardy说，他现在想将重要新闻都放置于首页，“毕竟我们仍然属于报纸，一旦有重大新闻，我们就会尽快售出我们所有的报纸。”
Knowles说，Red Eye在广告内容上已经走在了前头，但他补充说：“我并不想说它是资金运作的一个成功典范，但是，Tribune让它找到了自己的实质问题。这是没有时间限制的。”
Gardy说：“MX已经如我们所预期的那样运营了，并将在三年之内赢利。并且当你走进墨尔本的地铁车站，看到铺天盖地的MX时，你会有一种非常乐观的感觉。”
“我们将潜在的广告客户定位在那些火车乘客当中，在从一座城市到South Yarra的火车中,他们发现乘客们将MX仔细看了个遍。对于那些需要做广告的客户尤其是对我们的市场来说，将大有作为。我们正在与电信运营商，银行以及墨尔本CBD的零售商联手合作。”
对年青读者的吸引并不是局限于像《地铁报》，MX和Reds这样的具有超前的实践经验，主流报纸－日报或周末报的编辑们所面临的任务是要瞄准对全部人口的全方位的服务。
论文报纸业的新一轮出击来自

Jeni Cooper是居悉尼报纸销售量榜首的《星期日电讯报》的编辑，她说，四年前当她接手这项工作时，介于18－34岁的女性人群读者明显不足，“我们没能拥有这一群体的大多数，我们失去了本该属于我们的。”
她对Body and Soul的反应是，专注对健康，美容，生命力的的话题，“有很强的可视性，大篇幅整版的画面。”Cooper说：“在过去的几年间，我们已拥有了二万三千名18－34岁的女性读者，并且还有大量的男性读者。他们看Body and Soul，是因为它的内容精彩，充满活力，而且他们喜欢看图片。
《星期日电讯报》也在与它的竞敌Fairfax的Sun-Herald展开激战，他们的竞争市场定位在7－13岁的孩子，发行商们希望孩子们在早期就养成读报的习惯。去年，Cooper对喜剧部分进行了更新之后，作为回击Sun-Herald着手开办了被称为K-Zone（夹带在报纸中的报纸）的报纸。编辑Phil McLean表示，与K-Zone月刊杂志的发行商Pacific Magazines达成特权协议，出售十五万份。
“我们计划为孩子们开辟一个新的部分，我去广告客户那里试图获得它们的承诺，我一直听他们说，你需要的是夹带在报纸中的那种报，直到我厌倦了，所以我去他们那里成交了一件很划算的生意。”
McLean承认“追击”那些 13－18岁的孩子来说是很困难的。“如果你置身于大众市场，你将无法对他们进行分类定位，不过，每个周日的报纸都能增加闲谈内容来吸引他们这些年轻读者们的注意力。”
Greg Hywood,是Fairfax的The Age在墨尔本的发行商，他进行的一个长期观察的结果表明，那部分流失的成人青年读者属于周期性读者群。“当那些年轻人在家中与他们的父母在一起的时候，他们就养成了读报的习惯，一旦他们离开家就将注意力转向别的事而丢掉了这个习惯。”他还说：“确实，当他们有了属于自己的家，有了孩子和责任感的时候，他们又会重新找回这个习惯。”
“这就是所谓的巩固阶段，正是目前正在进行的状态，人们结婚，然后拥有了家庭，然后在他们稳定下来之前又得花费大量的时间来搬家。研究表明，这些读者并未流失，他们当中的90%在每周都会读报，而且他们的阅读习惯兴趣仍然十分强烈。但这一年龄段的人并不会经常性的阅读。”
“发行商的出版物需要确保只要报纸不是在育高峰期出生的人的掌管之下，你就不会放下它－今天编辑部大多数的领导人都是在生育高峰时期出生的，我们希望他们真实地反映对我们的评价，但我们同样也希望他们能施展影响力，表述观点。”
“那全都是具有实用性且与之相关的内容。我们的目标人群是那些从事社区工作的人，并且我们搜索与这些人有关的高质量的新闻素材。而不是什么脑外科手术这类的东西。”
（来源： The Australian.news.com.au 中华传媒网译）
The new paper chase
By Mark Day 　February 20, 2003
WAY back in 1972, before most 18-year-olds had the vote and anyone under 30 had been born, almost five in 10 Australians aged between 18 and 29 said they read a newspaper every day. Today the figure is one in five, and experts say it will be one in 10 by 2010.

   
报纸业的新一轮出击 　
Editor to publisher: We have a problem.
Around the world the flight of the younger reader is being charted, debated and, in a few key experiments, fought. The battle is not made easier by the absence of a firm starting point: are young people refusing to engage with daily newspapers because they have little interest in reading – lured away by fast-moving graphic sites on the internet, computer games and television? Or is it that they have little interest in news – it being incessantly gloomy, largely irrelevant (in the absence of, say, conscription) and utterly outside their sphere of influence?

Or is it both? Or a combination of these and many other factors?
Whatever the answer, the problem is real. A study of Morgan readership trends in Australia from 1991 to 2002 shows young people are moving away from newspaper readership, with a steady decline in readership and reach for almost all newspapers among 14-to-24 year-olds. Over the decade, Monday-to-Friday readership was down 30 per cent, Saturday readership down 16 per cent, and Sunday readership down 11 per cent.
The 25-to-34 and 35-to-44 year-old age groups also showed a move away from weekday newspapers (readership down 19 per cent each). These age groups showed a similar level of declining readership for Saturday newspapers (down 5 per cent and 4 per cent respectively).
The one bright spot is that Sunday readership among 25-to-34 year-olds remained steady, while readership among 35-to-44 year-olds increased by 12 per cent.
Faced with these and similar figures globally, publishers of English-language newspapers are watching events in London, Melbourne and Chicago closely for clues on how to combat the declining interest of young readers.
Associated Newspapers' London Metro is the most mature of the new-style publications. It started in 1999 as a defence against a rumoured start-up by the Swedish Modern Times Group of a clone of its Stockholm commuter give-away, also called Metro.
Associated, publisher of the Daily Mail, got in first, and now distributes 825,000 copies of Metro through the transport systems of London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh. It connects with a market of young city office workers – 77 per cent under age 44, and 81 per cent in work – who advertisers traditionally find very hard to reach. It is now profitable.

   
报纸业的新一轮出击 　
In Melbourne, News Limited's Herald and Weekly Times publishes MX, a snappy, highly coloured tabloid which distributes 90,000 free copies each afternoon. MX saw off a morning competitor, the Fairfax Melbourne Express, in its first year, and has hit the spot in its young, affluent target market, with 68 per cent of its readers aged under 34, and more than half in full-time work. MX celebrated its second anniversary last week, still in loss, but profitability is said to be in sight.
And in Chicago, as the local market leader, the Chicago Tribune, readied an offshoot called Red Eye last October, its competitor, the Chicago Sun-Times, matched it with its own for-youth-by-youth title, Red Streak. Today they're still slugging it out, but are backing off the youth-only tag. In Chicago, it seems any readers will now do.

The Herald Sun's editor-in-chief, Peter Blunden, says MX is not a clone of its overseas counterparts, but more "an opportunity to fill a gap in the market" and experiment with a publication designed to strike a chord with younger readers.
He defines MX as a paper that doesn't take itself too seriously, shies away from gloom and doom in favour of bite-size stories that promote a smile or a chuckle, does not pretend to be a paper of record, is in touch with pop culture and is not afraid to be adventurous.
"It's a terrific example of what young people can do if you give them the challenge," Blunden says. "It looks right and it feels right. "
MX is a subs' paper. Thirteen of the staff of 25 are sub-editors, whose job it is to distil stories from the six staff reporters (all in their 20s), wires and other non-conventional sources, such as websites, and give them a heavy cut, a light polish and a glib head. Even standard features carry smart lines. There's nothing like "Your Stars" for the daily horoscopes – it's "Should I get out of bed today?"
"We want it to be quick and catchy," says editor Mark Gardy. "We want it to be light and bright, positive and balanced about the news of the day and informative about our readers' nights – what's worth watching on TV, what are the movies, where are the best bars.

   
报纸业的新一轮出击 　
"There's no comment; no leaders; no lectures. It's important that we don't dictate to our readers because they won't be dictated to."
This sophisticated independence of the youth audience – or a refusal to be patronised – was also quickly apparent in Chicago. The two Reds waded into the market proclaiming their youth credentials, but met with resistance.
Critics called them turgid and unexciting. Writing in Salon.com, Jack Shafer said: "The less said about the two papers the better. At 25c a copy they are both overpriced, slicing the news so thin the servings wouldn't even make a meal for an anorexic. In the race between bad and worse, who needs to declare a winner?"

Co-editor Joe Knowles told Media: "While we very much want to attract young readers, we're backing out of the 18-to-34-label trap. It's too exclusive. I say let the readers decide if Red Eye suits them, whatever their age.
"We do skew younger in terms of the kinds of pop culture we cover, because it helps distinguish us from the Tribune, which devotes plenty of space to the fine arts, jazz, theatre, etc . . . But we don't want to be thought of as the Kiddie Trib or Tribune in Training Pants. I don't think we want to be seen as condescending, phony, or the too-anxious suitor. The people in this city are wise to that – you try to be cool, and it's death. The people are too sharp and would sniff that out right away."
Knowles now defines his paper as one for people who don't have the time for a full-service paper and agrees that while he hopes to attract younger readers, any more readers will do.
Gardy and Knowles both admit to refining their editorial focus since launching. Gardy says he is now more willing to put hard news on page one. "We are, after all, still a newspaper," he says. "When there's a big news story we clear our stands much quicker."
Knowles says Red Eye is ahead of schedule on advertising content, but adds: "I wouldn't call it a [financial] success yet, but the Tribune is letting it finds its roots. There is no time limit."

   
　
Gardy says MX was launched with an expectation that it would be profitable within three years. "It has a tremendously positive feel," he says. "You go into the railway stations in Melbourne and it's wall-to-wall MX.
"We take potential advertisers for a train ride . . . from the city to South Yarra they see people with their noses in MX. It works best for clients who make their ads especially for our market, and we are getting the telcos, banks and Melbourne CBD retailers to stay with us."

The challenge of attracting younger readers is not limited to the frontline experiments such as Metro, MX and the Reds. Editors of all mainstream newspapers – daily or Sunday – face the task of trying to deliver full service to all demographics, while wooing younger readers.
Jeni Cooper, editor of the top-selling Sydney paper The Sunday Telegraph, says when she took over the job four years ago there was a glaring deficiency in readership among 18-to-34 year-old women. "We didn't have a lot of them, and we were losing what we had," she says.
Her answer was Body and Soul, an insert (now included in News Limited's main Sundays) devoted to health, beauty and vitality. "It is very visual, with lots of full-page images," says Cooper. "In the past couple of years we have gained 23,000 women 18-to-34, and a lot of men, too. They see Body and Soul as young and groovy – and they like looking at the pictures."
The Sunday Telegraph is also in a fight with its rival, Fairfax's The Sun-Herald, over the "little kids" market – seven-to-13 year-olds, who publishers would love to get a newspaper habit early in life. Last year, after Cooper revamped her comics section, The Sun-Herald replied with a lift-out called K-Zone. Editor Phil McLean says it is the result of a franchise agreement with Pacific Magazines, publisher of the K-Zone monthly magazine, which sells 150,000 copies.
We planned a new section for kids, and I went to advertisers to try to get it underwritten," McLean says. "I kept hearing them say 'What you need is K-Zone' until I was sick of it, so I went to them and we did a very cost-effective deal. They bring to the table some great relationships with advertisers, and we profit-share all advertising sold into K-Zone on Sundays. It's now franchised around the world."

   
　
McLean admits chasing 13-to-18 year-olds is more difficult. "If you're into mass markets, you can't niche just for them," he says. Nevertheless, both Sundays have increased their celebrity/gossip content to attract younger demographics.
GREG Hywood, publisher of Fairfax's The Age in Melbourne, takes the long view, saying the loss of young adult readers is part of a life cycle. "It's always been that young people have got the newspaper habit at home with their parents, then move out and lose the habit in favour of other things, like having a good time," he says. 'It is also true that they tend to rediscover the habit when they get a home of their own, kids, and responsibilities.
"This is called the consolidation phase, and it's happening later these days. People marry later, have families later, and spend more time moving about before they settle down. Research shows these readers are not lost – 90 per cent of them read a paper in any week. The reading habit is strong, but not frequent at that age.
"The issues for publishers include making sure you don't leave your papers in the hands of baby boomers forever – most newsroom leadership today is baby boomer – and at Fairfax we have a quite aggressive program of taking on young trainees in their 20s, with a bit of life experience, and saying to them: 'We want you to reflect our values of accuracy and good journalism, but we also want you to exert your influence, bring to us your perspectives.'
"It's all about relevance and the content mix. We target people who are engaged with their community, and we seek high-quality news relevant to those people. It's not brain surgery."
Mark Day: Luring the young and the restless

   

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