The aggressive UK newspaper market has embraced online news, making developments quick to stay ahead of the game. Editors Weblog has spoken to top executives at two quality and two tabloid newspapers to try and garner the key themes and learnings from potentially the most competitive newspaper market in the world. Over the course of four pieces of analysis, we compare the approach of all four newspapers towards logistics, content, staff and financials.

Part 1: Logistics Matter
Part 2: Let readers lead your content
Part 3: The web provides opportunities to show content on more than one platform. Use it wisely.
Part 4: Don’t forget your staff, or the bank balance
 

Know your audience

These factors perhaps explain why The Times has opted for a dual home page giving the readers the choice of UK or World - around 60% of the audience goes to ‘World’. By knowing the audience, tweaks can be made to a site to make it more attractive and therefore more sticky.


The Telegraph in contrast has ‘touchpoints’ throughout the day which are in essence mini deadlines to ensure news is fresh at each of its peaks – before work (9am), lunchtime (1pm) and leaving work (6pm). They have also tailored specific products to those times of day such as ‘Telegraph pm'  the afternoon pdf downloadable version which goes online at 4pm ready for their last peak of the day at 6pm. Thus, traffic can be boosted during certain times by releasing products that are appealing to the current/target audience.

 

The Telegraph’s products have perhaps not been as sophisticated as the Times’ (and the idea of the pdf product has been criticized by others) but they have recognized it’s not just about launching new, exciting services. By launching services at the time of day more suitable for their readers, they promote longer term stickiness through encouraging habit at those times. 

Use your readers effectively – User Generated Content

Asking readers to contribute to the site has proved popular around the world.

Pete Picton, Online Editor, The Sun, tells Editors Weblog that during the annual ‘meet the readers’ weekend, he got the sense that the readers saw the newspaper as their own - the staff just look after for them. He saw in this a great opportunity to create an online community and in October 2006 launched the highy successful MySun.

MySun builds on the loyalty of readers, requiring a completed profile before being able to contribute. It has proved an enormous success enabling readers to create blogs, have discussions and appear as the profile of the day. An online community has been created around one thing  - readers common love of a particular newspaper.

It is often said that you can tell a lot about a person from the newspaper they read. There is a collective set of beliefs and values attached to a newspaper, which determines why the analysis and opinion is worth that particular cover price to the individual. This collective set of beliefs and values creates a community. The Sun appears to be the only site to have replicated this feeling of community online to the same extent.
 
The Mirror will soon be launching its ‘Voice of Britain’ where it will ask ‘real’ people in ‘real’ jobs (i.e. representative of the readership) to blog their views of what’s going on in the country. The basic idea is to give a voice to a widely seen platform.


The two tabloids have different end goals though have a fairly similar approach. The Sun is looking to build a community around it’s own content whereas the Mirror is looking at using its readers to provide content for the entire audience. It’s important to decide what the aim is before starting out.

The pattern of usage is different from print to web and many people come through search engines looking for specific content/stories rather than browsing what’s on offer as you would normally do in a newspaper. Creating a community ensures that these readers come back to the site as a central point, it’s a good way of guaranteeing a base readership (assuming that the site continues to provide the same level of quality).

As well as building a community where readers can talk to each other, it’s important to encourage dialogue with this newspaper itself. At thesun.co.uk, users are obliged to register before being able to post a comment. The comments are moderated to a small degree (no swear words or racism allowed) but remain largely unchanged. Picton gives his reasoning as to why this is popular with readers: “The Sun readers have always been good at sending in stories, this is just another medium to do so”.

All four of the newspaper websites actively encourage their readers to take part in the site. They acknowledge that incoming feedback is an important tool to enable them to grow and adapt their content to the readers.
 

The Times and Telegraph both appeal to wide audiences. Their core readers are older (40’s plus) but they target stories that appeal to or affect their children/grandchildren to get a response and attract younger audiences.

Social networking has been mentioned by some of the newspapers but not as prominently as one might expect. One News International title says that they have consciously chosen not to act as competitor to MySpace, owned by the same organization. Social content though, does look popular. The Times and The Mirror have chosen to limit links to two sites – both have del.icio.us, The Times also uses newsvine and The Mirror uses the popular digg. The Telegraph adds NowPublic and Reddit, bringing their total to five. The Sun currently doesn’t use these tools.

The advance of social content shows that newspapers are starting to look outside their own space and content where they don’t have or can’t naturally build a community.

Anne Spackman, Editor, Times Online sums up this up nicely “Use what readers send you, add another dimension, make them laugh”