Independent Editor: 'advertising has caused us grief'

Posted by Val�rie Gazzano on December 1, 2004 at 1:30 PM

In the Guardian, Claire Cozens reports the views of Independent editor Simon Kelner about "media buyers being "unresponsive" to the huge changes taking place in the newspaper industry and warned they would have to accept new formats. Kelner admitted advertising difficulties had delayed plans to turn the Independent on Sunday into a tabloid and said he was "still having the argument" over advertising rates on the daily paper. Earlier this year Kelner said the IoS could go fully tabloid before 2005 and today the paper's editor, Tristan Davies, predicted the Sunday broadsheets would "have to go the same way" as their weekday counterparts by downsizing. Davies said he had never believed the appeal of tabloid papers was restricted to the commuter market. But he admitted the "practical considerations of advertising and weighing that up against circulation" was holding back a move to go fully tabloid. Kelner also reiterated his controversial view that "in-depth reporting and analysis" were becoming a bigger driver of newspaper sales than breaking news.

The Independent editor pointed out that newspaper sales on the day after the US election were 5-10% down because readers turned to other sources for the latest information on the poll results.
But he said sales of papers rose by between 6% and 12% the next day, when readers sought analysis of the results. "What that told me was the thing papers can do - and the internet can't - is in-depth reporting and analysis of big news stories."

Source: The Guardian

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