Can The UK Government Survive Another Newspaper Relaunch Before The May Elections?

Philip M. Stone February 24, 2010 Follow on Twitter

The Observer, the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, relaunched this week with a huge scoop – the serialization of a new book accusing Prime Minister Gordon Brown of bullying 10 Downing Street staff. With a general election coming up in some 70 days that’s just what the Prime Minister, behind slightly in the polls, didn’t need. But what great publicity The Observer got from it all and a great lesson for everyone – if you’re doing a relaunch go for the “big bang”!

By the time the first edition hit the street early Saturday night Sky News and the BBC domestic 24-hour news channel were blanketing the story and it still hasn’t let up. The Independent on Sunday ran an interview with the Prime Minister calling the claims in the book “Lies”. Was the prime minister a bully? Did the chief civil servant give him a verbal warning? Did some of his staff call a bullying hotline looking for help?

And it’s still going on – Brown’s Chancellor of the Exchequer on Tuesday evening told Sky how 10 Downing Street “unleashed the forces of hell” against him when he had dared to say last year that the country was undergoing its worst recession in 60 years. Before that interview it looked like the PM’s damage control department had won the day and that it all basically boiled down to the government saying there was no bullying and the scoop was little more than a journalist trying to sell books, versus that well-respected journalist who said it was so but he didn’t have anyone on the record to actually say that. But with the Chancellor’s Sky interview the story has legs again, perhaps to run the week.

What we don’t know as of this writing, however, is whether The Observer’s relaunch got the increased readership it was looking for from not only this exclusive, but also, although lost a bit in all the political fray, a very long fascinating interview with Manchester United Manager Sir Alex Ferguson. TheObserver, the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper – its first issue came out December 4, 1791 -- lost 17.3% of its circulation last year, the worst percentage of any UK Sunday national and this relaunch may well be its last chance.

It’s a bit worrying that The Observer spin doctors aren’t out there saying the paper did well. When it switched from broadsheet to Berliner size in January 2006 the spin doctors were quick to tell us that circulation immediately shot up 25% for a January 2006 ABC of 550,000. But having sampled the newspaper the new readers didn’t stick around for long and by January of this year circulation was at just 354,565 – that’s a huge 36% fall.

If The Observer doesn’t make it past this relaunch then it certainly won’t be for lack of trying. Under the same ownership as The Guardian, which just happens to have the UK’s most visited newspaper website with near 37 million unique users in December – about half from outside the UK -- that web site pulled out all the stops to editorially promote the Sunday newspaper. Starting on the Monday beforehand it ran an article promoting the book serialization with the lead, “The Observer relaunches on Sunday with expanded sport, review and main sections, and an exclusive serialization of columnist Andrew Rawnsley's book on the final years of the Labor government. John Mulholland, the Observer editor, said the relaunch was aiming to give readers the chance to ‘pause, review and reflect’ on the week's news.”

Three days later the Web site promoted a TV ad for the relaunch, “Observer trails relaunch with TV ad” with the sub head, “Ad to promote Sunday's redesigned Observer stars Thick of It actor Justin Edwards as a TV reporter” and of course there was a link to watch the ad. The web site also had a contest to give away 10 subscriptions to The Guardian and The Observer. And naturally there were in-house banner ads promoting the relaunch.

The book serialization must have achieved branding goals beyond dream. Most TV reports credited that the bully accusations came from a book being serialized in The Observer, but is that the type of story that catches the fancy and keeps it. Fine, the new newspaper is spiked for a couple of weeks with serializations and exclusives – but what happens then? Will readers stick around when things return to “normal”?

The evidence from the past year indicates they don’t. Once your unique story is “old” newspaper readers drift away.  During the summer the Daily Telegraph had a story that had enough legs on it to run for weeks – that Members of Parliament were cheating on their expenses. Every day came new revelations, and not too many people escaped unscathed – including the prime minister. When The Telegraph broke that story it had a circulation of around 800,000 and it is said that during the peak reporting of the story circulation rose about 100,000 daily so it climbed to around 900,000

And yet come January, 2010 The Telegraph’s circulation for the first time had dropped below 700,000. So, once the hoop-la over the expenses had passed some 200,000 readers said bye-bye to The Telegraph within just a few months. So the big question must be whether is that what The Observer can expect once its serialization of the bully book ends next Sunday. 

Of course, it could be that the public may like the relaunched Observer on its own merits. There are fewer sections – business and personal finance being wrapped into the main news section, and travel consigned to the revamped Observer Magazine.  And monthly sections – Sport Monthly, Music Monthly and Woman -- have been canned. But the seven-day TV listings are back.

Last summer Guardian News and Media (GNM) gave serious consideration to closing The Observer because of multi-million pound losses, but there was an outcry – not the least by journalists – and come November the publishers said the paper would be saved, but in a slimmer form. But in an indication how serious things had gotten GNM this month sold its regional newspapers to Trinity Mirror in what can only be seen as a fire-sale – those who support Trinity Mirror say it was “the deal of the century”. GNM has as its top priority to protect The Guardian; if The Observer can be saved, then so be it, but the jury is still out on its last chance.