Digital transformation of the Basingstoke Gazette

 

Newspapers must find ways of making money from digital...

In April 2019, the 140 year old Basingstoke Gazette was in the doldrums, writes James Evelegh for InPublishing magazine.

Newspaper sales, which had been 25,813 in 2000 had shrunk to 6,232 by 2018, at which point Newsquest decided that enough was enough and pulled all its titles, including the Gazette, out of the ABC.

An educated guess would put the April 2019 circulation figure in the 5k region, whilst the publishers reported 430,000 visitors to its website that month.

Despite this disparity in numbers, the newspaper was still a print-first operation. Getting the newspaper out each week was the newsroom’s primary objective and stories were assessed in the context of print deadlines and layouts. Energy levels reflected the print cycle; frenetic activity in the lead up to press day, followed by quiet afterwards, a cycle repeated weekly.

Depending on when a story arrived into the newsroom, it could therefore be up to seven days before the good people of Basingstoke knew anything about it, although the reality is that they probably did know, but were getting their news not from the Gazette but from Facebook. Being second with the news is not a good place for a local newspaper to be.

Into the mix stepped an energetic young editor, Katie French, who had cut her journalistic teeth editing the student newspaper at Plymouth University, where she had ruffled feathers by highlighting university disability cuts. Told by the powers that be to take the story down or face dismissal, she refused. Whilst at Plymouth, her reputation was further enhanced when in 2014, she helped organise ‘The Naked Debate: are boobs really news!’ where four guest speakers discussed whether or not the Sun should ditch its page 3 topless model. (Incidentally, Yes: 64%; No: 22%; unsure: 14%. For the record, the Sun stopped publishing topless pictures in the paper in January 2015.)

Read the full feature here.