Word is officially out – Johncom’s new daily called The Times will hit Sunday Times subscribers’ doorsteps in June with an online-savvy business plan never seen before in the South African print landscape.
In a sneak preview to The Media magazine’s team, the new editor Ray Hartley (former Sunday Times deputy editor), explained the method behind the ‘madness†to publish a newspaper for a growing generation of internet users.
‘We live in an era where information is plentiful but attention isn’t,†says Hartley, in reference to an interview on his blog which has been used as a viral online campaign to introduce the new daily.
The interview on the blog is with Richard A. Lanham about his theory called the ‘Economics of Attentionâ€. He argues that ‘information is not a scarce commodity; we’re drowning in it. What is scarce is the human attention needed to make sense of it.â€
The idea is to create a publication for internet users who have been too busy to pay much attention to newspapers.
The Times wants to direct its readers to the internet for more information and news updates during the day, where web users will be able to blog, listen to podcasts and view video clips produced by journalists dedicated to the website.
This is unlike most local newspapers which purely reproduce their copy on their websites and update their content with news agency stories. At the moment, Moneyweb.co.za, is the only newsroom in the country with an editorial team dedicated to online.
The Times will have its own staff complement of 80 in a newsroom run separately from the Sunday Times.
The paper will carry a news diary along with the main story of the day on its front page and some longer and more in-depth articles inside. It will have sections dedicated to business and health – but no share price pages because that information is readily available and constantly updated on the internet.
Until last year’s launch of The Weekender, the Business Day’s weekend paper, media giant Media24 has been the only group in the country that has managed to successfully bring a new paper, the Daily Sun, to the market. In recent years we have seen the Afrikaans Sunday paper Die Wêreld, and the dailies, ThisDay and Nova, fail. It is too early to predict the future of Media24’s new Sunday tabloid Sondag which is launching in May.
Will The Times stand the test of time? Considering the carefully crafted business plan, it certainly stands a chance. Not only will it be the first in our print market to be so strongly orientated to online, but it also starts off with an instant circulation figure of at least 120,000, making it a very tempting product for advertisers. It will be marketed as a digitally integrated package combining print and online, and, in some cases, even mobile media. The newspaper will only be distributed to Sunday Times subscribers and will not be available anywhere else. That gives it a dedicated audience, and probably a high household readership. Perhaps a recipe for success?