Does anyone actually buy a newspaper any more?

[R6tty]

It's a great loss. I subscribe to The Times Online. If I was to buy The Times and The Sunday Times at full price, it's knockong on £100 a month.

[Jambur]

robscot said:

Pop your 'local' paper into https://www.abc.org.uk and post up the circulation...


(some shockers out there, and certainly not what they are telling prospective advertisers in one case I know of.)

I see that regularly first hand with third party pre printed inserts. Paper A tells their customer they print 20k, customer sends in 21k inserts. In reality they print 15k, with 5 to 6k thrown in the bin. Of particular note for this were a few religious publications with charity based inserts.

[soxboy]

I get The Times on a Saturday and The Sunday Times, but only because I get it free with a Waitrose card (alongside a free coffee). If they weren’t free I wouldn’t buy them.

I do sometimes buy the Yorkshire Post on a Saturday.

[robscot]

Jambur said:

I see that regularly first hand with third party pre printed inserts. Paper A tells their customer they print 20k, customer sends in 21k inserts. In reality they print 15k, with 5 to 6k thrown in the bin. Of particular note for this were a few religious publications with charity based inserts.

There is also some fun maths where ABC says they print 3,000 copies. The Circulation.

However, other systems (JICREG?) say 3.8 people read every copy from cover to cover (!) soooo 11,400 people !

Radio listenerships are even more fun...

[R6tty]

soxboy said:

I get The Times on a Saturday and The Sunday Times, but only because I get it free with a Waitrose card (alongside a free coffee). If they weren’t free I wouldn’t buy them.

I do sometimes buy the Yorkshire Post on a Saturday.

I thought Waitrose stopped this about 3 years ago?

[jurbie]

robscot said:

Pop your 'local' paper into https://www.abc.org.uk and post up the circulation...


(some shockers out there, and certainly not what they are telling prospective advertisers in one case I know of.)

7900 for our local paper in a city with a population of about 260,000 people.

I did work experience in the photography department back in about 1990. The place was absolutely buzzing, the newsroom was huge with loads of TVs hanging from the ceiling showing the CEEFAX news page. It was like every newspaper newsroom you ever saw in the movies.

There was a full team of photographers with their own darkroom, going out and shooting their assignments in the morning and then in the afternoon developing the film and printing the pictures. I imagine the bigger regional papers would have had a dedicated dark room team.

Today it's a small office with a handful of people mostly ripping stories from social media it seems. I think there is just one photographer there.

[soxboy]

R6tty said:

soxboy said:

I get The Times on a Saturday and The Sunday Times, but only because I get it free with a Waitrose card (alongside a free coffee). If they weren’t free I wouldn’t buy them.

I do sometimes buy the Yorkshire Post on a Saturday.

I thought Waitrose stopped this about 3 years ago?

They used to have spend £10 and get a free paper, then they changed it and with my card I get a Times - I could claim one every day but I don’t read that much. Must be a random thing because my dad gets The Telegraph with his but they wouldn’t switch it to The Times!

[Deranged Rover]

The Sunday Times every Sunday.

[blue_haddock]

My missus father does for the horse racing so he can study the form prior to placing his bet at the bookies

[Biker's Nemesis]

The Gauge said:

I used to be a Sunday morning paper boy in the 80's, my bag weighed a tonne at the start of the round. I'd sometimes use my bike to take some of the weight with the bag wrapped around my BMX handlebars

All for £1 per week

Was that just for the Sunday?

[vixen1700]

Used to always buy a Standard to read on my tube journey home from work, but probably haven't bought any newspapers at all since around 2004.

I may walk up to the station to pick up a Metro if I'm doing some painting just to line the floor.

[Harry H]

I find the danger of internet news is that it generally serves up stuff you've shown interest in and it's too easy to skip things where the headline doesn't immediately grab you.

You miss so much

Nothing beats sitting down on a Sunday and working through a newspaper. I've read and learn't stuff purely because I haven't had to search for it. It's just there.

Not that I do it often enough

[hilly10]

I have to get the wife the MOS every week she insists on it.

[CooperD]

I used to buy a newspaper every Saturday, mainly for the TV guide with it and the holiday supplement was usually quite informative. That was before the pandemic. I haven't bought one now for almost 3 years.

[Burrow01]

I buy the FT Weekend pretty frequently, its nice to browse through with a coffee on a weekend morning, and also, as someone else said , you pick up a lot of different articles that you might not read online.

I have an online subscription, and you miss a lot of articles that might be interesting when you read it online

[Slow.Patrol]

I haven't bought a newspaper for years.

I used to love getting the Sunday Times on a wet Sunday and spending the whole day reading all the supplements.

We have just got back from a busy week away and spent very little time catching up on the news. It is so much better being ignorant of the world's issues.

[XJSJohn]

If Private Eye counts, then yes.

Funny this topic coming up as we were just talking last night about how much more "responsible" the media (news) was back when stories were reported in columns and inches or just 30 minutes at 6 and 9pm.

Now with 24 hour News Channels and the internet, its all about the sensationalism of a story to keep viewers watching to the next ad break.

[Harry H]

Slow.Patrol said:

We have just got back from a busy week away and spent very little time catching up on the news. It is so much better being ignorant of the world's issues.

There is that.

We're sometimes in danger of a news overload. But as it's fed to us on line it's not always the right news.

[paulw123]

Last week I bought one to get a voucher probably the first paper I have bought in over 10 years. When I worked for a landscape company we always used to buy the Sun every day for 30p to read at lunchtime. Bad times.
I do my best to ignore the news so unlikely to ever buy one again

[Ben Jk]

I like to read one but never do actually buy one.

I do pick up the Metro at stations when I am there.