Post's demise resurrects national paper ghost

By NZPA

Thursday 27th June 2002

The end of Wellington's afternoon daily Evening Post has revived speculation of a newspaper war in Auckland, or even the emergence of a national daily.

Independent Newspapers Ltd, which owns the Post, has long sent its morning sister paper The Dominion to Auckland.

But media watchers and INL itself have ruled out a full-on assault by the newly merged, beefed-up Dominion Post on Auckland's Herald.

"It's too risky," says UBS Warburg media analyst David Lane. "I think The Herald's pretty entrenched."

While INL says the new paper will be looking to boost its presence in Auckland, chief executive Tom Mockridge said the emphasis is more on getting its papers into the Auckland market earlier than upping its numbers.

"We'll be looking at increasing our numbers but if we were being honest, we'd say that today we sell very few Dominions in Auckland at all so it will be off a very small base."

If the Wellington contender can arrive in Auckland earlier, it can seriously consider home deliveries as opposed to street sales.

But the paper's Auckland bid is seen as a defensive response to the Herald, which has been adopting a stronger position in the Capital.

Mr Mockridge says The Dominion Post will not be trying to compete with the New Zealand Herald but rather present itself as a `second buy' for people with a secondary interest in politics or the media or who enjoy two newspapers a day.

Media watchers agree The Dominion Post would be unlikely to try to tackle the Herald head-on.

"If you're looking for growth in the newspaper industry, the only significant population area is Auckland," says Jim Tully, head of Canterbury University's mass media and journalism department.

But since Aucklanders are not as avid newspaper readers as Wellingtonians, The Dominion Post would be expected to have a hard row to hoe.

"The Herald is actually performing pretty well at the moment and I really think The Dominion Post would be up against it trying to get too much of a foothold in the Auckland market," Russell Brown, host of National Radio's Mediawatch show, said.

Attempts have been made to challenge the Herald's dominance before. In the late 80s the short-lived Auckland Sun showed "there was a very significant readership which would be attracted to something other than the Herald", Mr Tully said.

But it was launched during a recession, and media dynamics have changed. Advertisers are happier with the Herald, media commentators say, and The Dominion Post does not have the ready-made Auckland loyalty that the Auckland Star/Sun had.

Auckland is also key to any paper which might have national aspirations, but the idea of a national paper is almost universally regarded as impossible.

"A national newspaper in New Zealand is very hard to imagine because the total population is not huge," Mr Tully said. "Secondly, our regions are very parochial and our newspapers based in provincial centres cater for that market...

"You are never going to convince readers in Southland that a paper that has some coverage of Southland can remotely compete with the Southland Times."

"People do tend to read their local paper," Mr Brown adds. The Dominion would be "stepping on toes" if it tried to pitch itself as a national paper, including those of other papers in the INL family.

In particular it would mess with the Christchurch Press, INL's most profitable daily, "at its peril".

INL agrees. "The problem with trying to appeal to a national audience is that you lose the alignment with the local community, and the dumbest thing the new paper could do here is to distance itself from Wellington," said Rick Neville, INL's head of publishing.

However, the Wellington merger does face some inherent risks, commentators say. The new paper is tinkering with the well-established Dominion masthead, which risks alienating both Dominion and Post readers.

Some disaffected readers and advertisers could turn more solidly towards community newspapers or other news sources, such as television or news websites.

One possible strategy for the new Dominion Post is to become a 24-hour paper -- essentially launching morning and evening editions.

But that gets a "categoric no" from INL's Mr Mockridge who said it would be too expensive, has failed overseas and essentially duplicates the existing situation.

However, the new Wellington paper does plan to send more copies into the top of the South Island and bottom of the North Island.

Mr Neville said there is a gap in the market for a morning paper in the top half of the South, where two INL-owned afternoon papers prevail. But that would not mean trying to compete with them by inserting local news.

"The new paper will have a lot more international news, more political news, more business news than the local afternoon papers can provide."

Possibly the closest thing to a national newspaper has been the emergence of 24-hour news websites, such as the popular Herald Online or INL's Stuff.

Although they are barely profitable yet, the websites keep the papers' brand visible and are being consulted by many business people several times a day.

But UBS Warburg's Mr Lane does not subscribe to concerns that the Internet is eroding newspaper readership.

"I think people thought that was a risk a year and a half ago and that hasn't proved to be the case ... I don't think there's a lot of growth in newspapers in general, but that's an industry issue.

"In terms of media spend, the only areas which are really growing are the smaller areas of radio and cinema, outdoor (advertising), etc. If the newspaper growth can keep up with the overall growth of the (advertising) industry, then they're doing a good job."

The Post's demise follows the fate of a long line of evening papers around the world, since evening television news emerged in the 1960s.

Around 90 jobs are to go in the Wellington newspaper merger, and they may not be the last big round of media job cuts. The Independent Business Weekly reported this week that there were rumours of 40 layoffs looming at the Christchurch Press, mainly in design and layout.

The new Dominion Post will hit the streets from July 8, INL said today.

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