Personalisation of the newspaper: good or bad?

Posted by Dominique Lewis Tuohy on May 9, 2006 at 12:37 PM

Peter Bale, editor of Times Online, the online portal belonging to the UK's number two quality daily, criticised the idea of over-personalising newspapers when speaking at the 'Tomorrow's Web' conference on May 3rd. His main criticism of personalising newspapers is that it makes for a "dull" newspaper. For Bale one of the main objectives of the newspaper is to "give people journeys that surprise them," in his view this is hampered by personalisation.

Bale did, however, quote examples of instances where some personalisation can work well. Here he mentioned the BBC's online product, 'Your BBC News' which uses a 'panel of personalised headlines'; this system allows a comfortable ammount of personalisation, while simultaneously "ensuring that users are still able to stumble across interesting stories."

Another good way of offering some personalisation to readers in Bale's view is the system of 'Editionising', the core concept of which is to offer various editions of the 'core product' with small variations for target audiences. This system allows a newspaper's website to "differentiate parent products and focus attention on the core values of the product."

Source: Association of Online Publishers (through the Ifra executive News Service)

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