Irish Regional Newspaper Circulation Jan June 2010

The only reason I used the phrase ‘regional newspapers’ in the title was because that’s how the phrase will be. They should be called (rebranded) the less parochial “weekly” or “local newspapers”, but I digress. Because of the chopping an changing in this market, it’s difficult to get an exact handle on it.

The only way is to compare “like with like” on the different years. So, like with like (ie the papers that were around in ‘08 and are still publishing a figure today) – the market is down 54,000 copies per week or 15%. Similarly, ‘09 to ‘10, the market is down 27,000 or 8%.

The highlights would be that the big drop was in the Kerryman down over 2,000 copies and nearly 5,000 over two years. From these figure it would seem that they were on their own in the Kingdom, but they are not. They have plenty of competition from publications that are not ABC audited and, therefore, are not published here. (The same can be said for every county, so sometimes the “competition factor” is not obvious as it would be on the ground).

The Leinster Leader and Meath Chronicle also took a dip (possibly attributed to foreign nationals returning/leaving?). Again, without the laborious line by line approach – one point: The local press cannot sustain a 7% decrease year on year. The local (or regional press as they insist on) are partly to blame. There is no sustained marketing effort collectively to promote their medium – one that’s held in high regard at a local level, but with a certain derision from the Dublin media buying “glitterati”.

They should harness the passion of the local populace to their publications and harness the goldmine they have in local information along with a myriad of other items the currently don’t do!