The importance of the front page
How important is the front page of a newspaper? It’s the entry point for most readers, so it’s very important. It’s also the hook on a shop shelf to attract an impulse buyer.
Publishing a newspaper isn’t rocket science; it’s common sense really. The influence of an editor is most noticeable in story selection and the emphasis given to particular stories.
While changes to the style and direction of a newspaper might affect sales in the longer term, casual buyers are won by word of mouth and a strong front page.
In my experience about 90 percent of newspaper buyers are regular, probably a bit more than that. A good front page or a special feature might swing five percent in extra sales.
It takes something extraordinary to life regular sales above five percent. I saw it happen over a whole week at the Kalgoorlie Miner when we had a body discovered, a mine death, follow-ups to the body in the bush and a young person’s cancer death all on the front page in six days.
Most of my decisions about what to place on the front page are instinctive and I actually find it hard to describe the process because there isn’t one.
I simply choose what I think will be the most interesting story/photo to the greatest number of people.
Quite often that will be something quirky; it generally isn’t political.
I just went through a monthly exercise today where we look at the individual circulation figures for each paper we produced in the previous month.
The biggest selling edition had a front page headline “Unsafe text”. The story was local people commenting on a national survey about mobile phone users reading their partners’ text messages.
The Border Watch was probably the only newspaper in Australia to run a version of that story on the front page.
Significantly, most of the people interviewed were under 21, the population segment least in tune with newspapers.
There were some raised eyebrows around the office when I placed that story (with a photo) on the front page.
It sold 500 papers more (about six percent) than our weakest selling Friday edition, which was a cover dedicated to a national league soccer match in Mount Gambier.
The lesson I take from the experience is to back my own judgment; also to seek new ways to engage young people and relate to them.
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Very interesting observation Michael. The story relating to your smallest market selling the most papers. Figure that.
I don’t think we (editors) make a big enough effort to appeal to young readers.