Hardly anyone buys newspapers these days. That’s a simple fact. So far as I can tell, the top-selling British newspaper is the Daily Mail, with daily sales of 682,071. I say ‘as far as we can tell’ because we don’t really know. None of Rupert Murdoch’s stable of newspapers declare their print circulation. The last time they did, in March 2020, their most popular title, The Sun, sold 1,210,915 copies a day. If the fall in their circulation has been anything like the rest of the print media, they’d be down at around 700,000, but it is believed to be well under that figure.
It’s not just Murdoch’s titles, the Sun and Times, who no longer publish their circulation figures. Neither do The Telegraph, which is estimated to down to around 190,000 and The Guardian at a miserable 50,000. Given that not all that long ago, everyone seemed to buy a newspaper, this is quite a change to the way in which we live our lives. Now it’s just a few hundred thousand mainly elderly folk who actually buy a physical newspaper, their days are clearly numbered. Nowhere is this more clear than when we venture to foreign climes.
We have a particular favourite Canary island which we visit from time to time and, being a keen observer of these things, I often take a peek at which UK newspapers are on sale in supermarkets and the like. And it’s always the same story. A small pile of Daily Mails, a smaller pile of Daily Mirrors and that’s about it. Both titles have elderly readerships, which fits in well with the demographic that holidays there, but few people seem to bother.
This is in contrast to The Old Days. The first time I visited Corfu in 1985, British newspapers were available all over the place, via Hellenic distribution (remember that?) usually a day late or with The Guardian two days late. Papers would arrive late in the morning and there would be a substantial queue of people eager for their diet of celebrity trivia and right-wing politics. The beach bars and sun beds would be packed with Sun and Mail readers. The last time we went to our favourite Canary island, the only place I saw newspapers was in supermarkets.
It could have been the embarrassment factor involved in buying the Sun and Mail and readers were hiding their copies inside porn magazines, but my feeling was that printed newspapers are close to death. In the case of The Mail, Sun and pretty well all of the newspaper world, I feel little to be sorry about.
Some people, like me, pay an annual sum to the newspaper of their choice to read on-line but I suspect even that model has only so much life in it. Younger people, who by and large get their news from the internet, won’t pay for stuff that’s free, or all but free (Spotify is a good example), elsewhere. If people are no longer willing to pay in order to read the hate-filled comment pieces by the likes of Richard Littlejohn, Sarah Vine and Rod Liddle, that’s probably something we should be celebrating, isn’t it?
I was late to the party in not buying a newspaper anymore. I’m barely ten years into the experience but I don’t miss a single aspect of it. I am still locked in the past when it comes to buying actual physical books, magazines and music, but newspapers are, to me, so yesterday. In the UK, over 65 million people don’t buy a newspaper, so for once in my life I’m in a majority.
Quite why the ailing and failing printed media still carries such influence when hardly anyone consumes it is perhaps more baffling. The political agenda is often set by what The Mail, Telegraph and Times say in their leader pages, even though hardly anyone reads them. The recent hateful anti-Labour, anti Keir Starmer campaigns have been led by virtually the entire print media, including and especially The Guardian, which has been attacking from the harder left rather than the prevailing right. Worse still, the leading news channels, like the BBC and Sky, have dutifully followed the anti-Labour agenda. I guess when one is in the Westminster playground, it can be easy to forget the real world outside where people want more mundane improvements in their lives, like getting a GP appointment or having pot holes fixed. I tend to switch off when ‘Tory Laura’ Kuenssberg, Chris Mason, Sam Coates and, especially lately Beth ‘Can I have a job on GB News?’ Rigby come on. Opinion pieces masquerading as journalism, a bit like pretty well all newspapers these days. There is no such a thing as a quality newspaper.
Perhaps that’s where we are heading, with the BBC and Sky turning into the Mail and Sun, ugly populism and clickbait? If I’m slightly smug about the slow death of newspapers, I’m not liking the idea of news outlets essentially turning into them. But maybe they won’t? People stopped buying newspapers and maybe they will switch off TV news, too? I’m halfway there already.
