Wednesday, November 23, 2011

APN ceases daily publication of Tweed Daily, Coffs Advocate

Yesterday's post, Belshaw's World - New England’s newspaper history bespeaks change, talked about aspects of the history of the media in New England.

Given this, I thought that I should record APN's decision to cease daily publication of the 123 years old Tweed Daily News and the 104 year old  Coffs Harbour Advocate.

In the latest set of Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, the Daily News was selling just 3,689 copies. The paper started life in 1888 as the Tweed and Brunswick Advocate. It became The Tweed Daily in 1914. At one point it was one of only two daily newspapers in Australia to have an offset printing press.

The Daily News will sell a print edition only at the weekends with a cover price of 50 cents instead of the current $1.30. It will go on offering readers online updates via the mydailynews across the week.

The Coffs Coast Advocate will  become a twice weekly freesheet, circulating on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On its paid for days it had been averaging 2,959 sales.

I have written a little on the history of the New England media. Maybe time to do an update.

Postscript

In a comment, the Armidale Express's Janene Carey (@janenecarey) pointed to the job losses involved - 30 to 35 of 85 staff, apparently mainly editorial.

Janene and I have talked about this one - the survival of the print press and the reporting that depends on that press - in posts and comments on a number of occasions. It's a very difficult issue.  

2 comments:

Janene Carey said...

Jim
Also of interest is that with this shift away from paper editions, APN are shedding more than a third of their editorial staff: 3o to 35 of 88, says the SMH

Jim Belshaw said...

Thanks, Janene. I will bring that piece of information up in the main post.