The Sunday Times is planning to start a free daily newspaper, to be launched by March next year, media analyst Anton Harber says on his blog. The paper will apparently be delivered for free to Sunday Times subscribers — a unique way of launching a free newspaper.
Although the idea has not yet been approved by the board, ”there is a sudden flurry of activity in the Sunday Times newsroom as a team of people have been seconded to work on the idea”, says Harber, a founding editor of the Weekly Mail, now the Mail & Guardian.
”Walls are being knocked down, new offices are to be built and there is a buzz as staffers debate the merits of starting a daily paper off the back of the country’s most lucrative Sunday paper,” Harber writes.
However, Mondli Makhanya, editor of the Sunday Times, told the M&G Online on Thursday that ”nobody is being hired; no appointments have been made, on this or any of the other projects we are considering”.
Makhanya said although a new daily paper has been discussed, no final decision has been made. ”It is one of a hundred million things we are considering,” Makhanya said. ”This is not at the top of our list.”
He said he respects Harber as his former editor, ”so I’m not going to say Anton is wrong … but there is no decision on it yet”.
Harber, however, writes that although he brushed off the idea at first, ”a number of sources have now confirmed it for me and offered me a number of details”.
He told the M&G Online that despite Makhanya’s comments, he knows that this plan is in the works. ”They are certainly recruiting people, even if they have not signed contacts yet,” he said on Thursday.
Regarding Makhanya’s comments, Harber said: ”Well, he has to say that, he has to play it down … [but] they are considering it very seriously.”
Calling it ”a revolutionary plan”, on his blog Harber applauds the innovation of creating a paper with an immediate circulation of 130 000 readers.
”Free newspapers are flourishing in many of the big cities of the world, but this is the first time I have heard of one being offered exclusively to subscribers of an already successful weekly paper,” Harber writes.
Such an initiative would make subscribing to the Sunday Times a very attractive offer and help boost the core product.
A danger with the proposed plan, though, is that the differences in working practices between a daily and a weekly could negatively affect reporters’ routines, Harber feels. The new product could also result in a loss of focus and damage the Sunday Times.
The exercise would also turn out to be quite costly, and that is probably why the board has not approved it yet, Harber says. ”But they must be fairly confident that they have a good case if they are already hiring and seconding people.”