And there’s everyone worrying about journalists. Turns out the death of newspapers (TM) may have a bigger impact than expected.
An article in the latest Scottish Local Retailer (go to page 24) and there it shows that news is the biggest seller for local retailers.
The article also lists the most common items people buy when they go for the paper: milk, lottery, sweets, cigarettes, bread and the most popular times for buying. It also goes as far as to tell retailers how they can maximise the news space where papers are placed, noting that papers dumped at the bottom don’t sell.
More interestingly, it also suggests – if I’m reading the graph on that page correctly – that there are times when people want to go in and get a newspaper/news product and it’s not there leading to people going without a paper – and also the other products that they may have bought.
It begs the question though: who stopped buying papers? I realise that the article doesn’t mention footfall in stories (if it’s up or down or constant) over any period, but this article leads me to think that in the demographics were there are local retailers, there is still a demand for news.
(The interesting breakdown would come from finding out why people are buying papers)
However, if papers do go away from a physical presence (something which probably won’t happen completely for decades. I think there will be a bottoming out, but I think there will be print for a while yet) what happens to all these shops? It’s another interesting part to the thought of news – specifically newspapers in this case – as something that brings people together and is part of a larger social fabric.
(anyone wondering where the thought process behind this one came from. It was spurred in part by Asda’s demands to magazines and a post on Seamus McCauley’s site about how some people think fast food is more vital than journalism.)
One response to “Death of newspapers means the death of local shops?”
Sales of newspapers have fallen dramatically in the last decade (in fact they have been in decline for fifty years) conversely the number of local convenience outlets has increased. So the answer is no. Incidentally whenever a newspaper headline asks a question, the answer is also normally no.