Liverpool beat Borussia Dortmund in a pulsating match on the morning of Friday, April 15 to enter the Europa Cup semi-final. As the referee blew the final whistle, newspapers in India were already printing their issues dated April 15. In some cases, the early editions were already headed to their destinations.
During the course of Friday, reports, updates, analyses, infographics, video clips, video and text interviews and reactions were frenziedly updated on dotcoms. Later in the day, the draw for the semi-finals was carried live on any number of portals, and the Twitterati gave football fans running commentary.
Short of knowing what Klopp, the Liverpool manager, had for dinner after the match, there is nothing about the match that was played and the semi-final to come that we did not know by early Friday evening. Yet, on Saturday morning, more than 27 hours after the match, newspapers in India carried reports on the match on their sports pages. Some were better written, some poorly, but all newspapers carried reports.
Who on earth would want to read these reports? As the saying goes, stale news stinks.
Newspapers in India can count their lucky stars that measurement of print media in India is such a disaster. Today, we have no third-party, independent measure of readership. The only yardstick available is the measurement of circulation, in some cases.
There is no data available on who reads a particular newspaper, on the age and gender of such a reader and on the time spent by the reader on a particular page or section. It’s this lack of measurement that is allowing newspapers to take their consumers for granted and shovelling drivel like reports of a 27-hour-old match onto what should have been premium real estate.
If the time spent on the page had to be measured accurately (and there is no reason to believe that the page would have been read by more than the few readers who were, miraculously, unaware of the result) the numbers would have been embarrassingly low. The immediate consequence of low time spent on a page is that the chance of an ad (on the page or on the facing page) being noticed shrinks as well.
If we leave the Liverpool-Borussia Dortmund match for a bit and travel to the rest of the newspaper, we will find the same laziness across it. News that has been reported ad nauseam the previous day on news channels, news portals and social media find their way even to the front page and to the lead stories in various sections.
This means the time spent across the newspaper would be alarmingly low which, in turn, means the chances of ads being noticed shrinks as well and ultimately means the revenue of the newspaper is under threat.
The newspaper business can milk this unmeasured cow for the time being, but the writing is on the wall. Advertisers can wait for hard data, or go with their gut feelings and an ‘extrapolation’ of their own consumption habits. If an advertiser skipped the Liverpool match report, it is easy for him or her to believe that most readers would skip the report, too.
There is little doubt that live TV news, digital and social media have, together, changed the way consumers consume news. The lack of immediacy of print is a disadvantage the medium cannot wish away, but it isn’t as if nothing can be done. Take a fresh look at the content and focus more on opinion, analysis and views, and stretch the life of print.
Obvious, you say? Tell that to the sports editors who published the report of the Liverpool match on Saturday morning.
The writer is Editor, Storyboard
More than 27 hours after the match, newspapers in India carried reports on it
