Anorak

Anorak News | Up, Up And Away

Up, Up And Away

by | 2nd, August 2005

‘NEWSPAPERS are never happier than when breaking bad news – the worse the disaster, the bigger the smile on a news editor’s face.

Anorak’s daily figures

A terrorist attack? Fantastic! An invasion of killer bees? Bring it on! A slow puncture in Jordan’s left breast? Break out the bubbly!

But there is one story that all papers appear to have missed over the past few years and that is the continuing decline in their own circulation.

Indeed, anyone reading the British press could be forgiven for getting the impression that the garden had never been rosier in what used to be Fleet Street.

Today’s Telegraph, for instance, can’t help but mention on its front page that it outsells its closest rival, the Times, by 220,000 copies a day.

Yesterday the Times was busy trumpeting the news that its circulation was going through the roof, while that of its closest rival the Guardian was falling faster than Rachel Elnaugh’s credibility.

And today’s Guardian also gets in on the act, boasting that it is “the best and most popular paper in the UK”.

Some claim given that it is outsold by, well, the Times and the Telegraph and, of course, by the Sun and the Mirror and, yes, by the Mail and the Express. Oh, and also by the Star and the Financial Times. In fact, by every national newspaper except the Independent.

But as always the Guardian has facts to back up its story for it seems that last month the paper’s website notched up nearly 130m page impressions from more than 11m users.

The Times website, by contrast, got only some 40m impressions – a difference gleefully represented by aid of a coloured bar chart on the Guardian’s front page.

Neither, however, is a patch on Anorak, whose audience has been growing by a staggering 20% a day since we started our ‘100 things to do with an old mobile phone, a pack of rusty nails and an unwanted rucksack’ feature.’



Posted: 2nd, August 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink