TAKEAWAY: It’s 2014 and, yes, a printed newspaper is born in Australia to cater to the lean back readers who may crave those long analytical reads on Saturday.
I always feel a sense of glee when I hear that a new newspaper is born. It’s even more exciting, in 2014, when that paper will be primarily a printed product.
Our admiration and respect for Australian real estate developer Morry Schwartz, the Melbourne property developer, who is already publisher of The Monthly and the Quarterly Essay. He claims that he always wanted to have a newspaper and thought this was the appropriate moment to do it.
The Saturday Paper premiered Saturday with about 10000 subscribers, on the way to what the publisher hopes will be 60000 to 80000 loyal readers who will crave the newspaper’s proposed fare of analysis, local news and, in the words of its young editor, Erik Jensen, “narrative writing that shares its aspirations with the New Journalism of the 1960′s”.
Ambitious, indeed, but a project that makes perfect sense, if we agree that print will live happily ever after on weekends. We have said it many times: it will be the weekend printed product that will survive, satisfying the needs of readers who may wish to disconnect and go for the full fare of long investigative and analytical pieces.
Editor Jensen also said:
“It is journalism that is a pleasure to read, not just for the news it breaks but the way it breaks it. It is journalism that opens doors which have not been opened and shines light on the true complexity of an issue, that gets deep inside politics and crime and business and social affairs and anything else that might benefit for deep storytelling. It is journalism that is a pleasure to read, not just for the news it breaks but the way it breaks it.”
We wonder how much news the new Saturday paper will break, although we can see that the news breaks may be more in the way of investigations and scoops that the newspaper’s journalists uncover.
We will watch how The Saturday Paper advances. We wish the creators much luck, and I know that the industry, primarily in Australia, will be watching closely. Disclaimer: I have collaborated with the teams of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age as they converted from broadsheet to tabloid.
Until we know more, we know that many skeptics will agree with the headline from The Guardian about this story: The Saturday Paper: who on earth would launch a newspaper today?
Apparently, publisher Morry Schwartz not only would launch a Saturday newspaper, but did so this weekend. He feels it is the right time to do so.
We say, why not? Ultimately, it is the content and treatment of stories that will determine if this Saturday newspaper makes it.
We hope it does.
Of related interest:
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