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Comment by speckledjim | Hacker News Reader

How did I know you'd be citing the Grauniad...

They have by far the highest readership of any sunday paper. That wouldn't evaporate overnight.

You knew I'd be citing the Grauniad because they're the only national newspaper that was covering the story in depth. (Until The Independent jumped on board, late in the day.) The Murdoch press and their rival tabloids were all keeping mum, and The Telegraph wasn't touching it either (possibly out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to the PM).

Politicians and rival media outlets are afraid of the NewsCorp empire. They own 30% of the UK newspaper market and a big chunk of its TV programming, and they have long memories. Not people you would want to have holding a grudge against you if you worked in that industry or had to run for re-election.

I knew you'd cite the grauniad because they're pretty much the opposite politically to NOTW/The Sun etc.

Of course they'd be attacking.

Isn't that irrelevant? It doesn't stop them from being right, and it's a little hard to skew losing advertisers as a good thing...

Actually the Telegraph ran several articles on the issue, including front pages. They are hardly fans of Murdoch. The Guardian really went for it though.

Yeah, the Telegraph have been going great guns recently. But the Guardian have been hammering away at this for yonks.

(I am reminded of the expenses scandal - The Guardian had a journalist who was petitioning the government to release the expense data for years, but didn't get anywhere except repeated trips to the courtroom. Then the Telegraph gets copies leaked from within the expenses office. It's a dirty world out there...)

You'd have to jack the cover price quite a bit to make up for the lost advertising. Also, the public is pretty disgusted about this; I think readership would have fallen off a cliff anyway.

The readers don't pay for the paper. The advertisers do.

FWIW, The paper costs £1, so with a readership of 7 million or so every week... That's around £350m / year.

The top advertiser, Sky, spends £2m a year with the paper.

So I find it hard to believe that advertisers are all that important.

Minus the cut to the retailer, minus the cut to the distributor, minus the cost of printing the thing... The income from advertisers is a much higher percentage of the paper's income than you think.

Well, the Metro and Evening Standard are given away for free in London each weekday, and only make money from advertising.

The Metro is mostly recycled news stories and press releases from their sister paid-for newspaper, the Daily Mail; their costs are going to be a little less.

Tabloids traditionally make a higher percentage of income from the cover price compared to broadsheets, partly because their readers are less affluent and so less appealing to advertisers. Still, this 2002 article puts advertising at 40%, which sounds pretty important.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2002/may/13/advertising.circ...

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