I notice that one of our local media firms is in trouble, Post on Eastcliff Richard (link on sidebar) articles on their own website and the BBCs so far.
I hope our Thanet Extra survives it’s a pretty good paper that I usually buy.
We used to get all of the free papers delivered something that petered out to the very sporadic, I am wondering if a lot of the fall in advertising revenue is due to the lack actual delivery as I used to advertise in them until they stopped coming through the letterbox regularly.
From an advertisers point of view I also think they could do much to improve advertising revenue by improving their internet sites. Your Thanet is the only paper to have an E-edition so the only one where the papers advertisements appear online.
None of the papers have feeds where they post our local stories, by this I mean that on this blog the latest stories by the other local bloggers appear on the sidebar soon after they are posted, but I can’t add the local papers new stories as their websites lack the technology.
The Thanet Extra site is the only one of the local paper websites where you can’t comment on the stories, although I have noticed that there is much less comment than one would expect on the other local newspaper sites where you can comment.
I think this is partly because it is so cumbersome to comment on them, no one likes filling in forms but mostly here in Thanet they haven’t joined in with, connected properly to and contributed to the local blogging scene, which is where Thanet is most alive on the internet.
The local journalists I speak to understand these problems, however solutions don’t seem to get up the management line quickly enough, if they are solutions, what do you think?
News, Local history and Thanet issues from Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate see www.michaelsbookshop.com I publish over 200 books about the history of this area click here to look at them.
Tuesday 23 September 2008
5 comments:
Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.
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It's a shame but I think we can expect more media cutbacks given the current economic climate.
ReplyDeleteI don't think any of the local titles have really got to grips with the interactive age yet, but then they are all driven by bottom line, and the bean counters must look at the small amount of online revenue, scratch their heads and then get busy with their spreadsheets.
I blog primarily as something to do in my tea break and because I'm interested in what goes on around me locally. But I'd never be able to rely on it as a source of income. I guess with you, Michael, there's at least a knock-on effect in terms of publicising Ramsgate's premier bookshop!
I never got the local free papers but there again I did used to trip over them leaflets and all in the nearby alley.
ReplyDeleteI like you never got sight of Thanet extra so am disinclined to advertise in it, seems like they need to sort out their delivery service rather than editorial content.
ReplyDeleteI notice no local paper has highlighted Thanet's appearance in
Rotten boroughs in Private Eye, obviously either dont want to give free advertising or not safe enough on libel grounds. Shame because it's what local people need to hear to make their minds up on China gateway
Richard a lot of the people I know in business are looking at the cost effectiveness of both advertising and their internet presence at the moment, I wouldn’t like to be in the web design or advertising business at jut now. I have been selling books on the internet since 1998 and frankly with the local history ones I publish, where I am the only source for them, I am surprised what a small proportion sell this way.
ReplyDeleteWith me the blogging is something to do when the bookshop is too busy to concentrate on anything else, what effect it has on business is a bit hard to evaluate, with the shop the whole nature of what is advertising and what is promoting a local arts and cultural resource is a bit vauge.
Bookshops come in a sort of grey area, they perform a similar function to libraries, museums art galleries and theatres for the cultural health of a town but have the same expenses as the takeaways betting shops etc.
I think the big problem with our local papers is that they have yet to grasp the idea that with blogging there should be very little separating the writer from the publish button. Blogging works by being very direct and they could do well to follow some of this lead by establishing sanctioned blogs and bloggers.
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