This is the new advertising campaign from the Evening Standard which went up all over London overnight:
The move to admit that the paper is out of touch was the brainchild of the new editor, Geordie Greig, after market research found that Londonders felt that the paper was negative, complacent and predictable.
Now this has caused somewhat of a fuss with Standard coloumist Roy Greenslade writing in the Guardian that this will be seen by former owners, The Mail Group, as an open attack on their editorial style and previous choices in editors. In his article he muses:
By saying sorry, Greig hopes not so much to distance his paper from its recent past as to shut the door on it.
Greenslade also points out the humbling circulation and readership figures when compared to free papers thelondonpaper and London Lite. Now surely this is where the real truth lies?
For example the Mail Group also owns the Metro in the morning, one of the most popular papers in the tube and also available in 13 other cities in the UK. Surely if they had got it so wrong with the Standard there would be similar problems here? But there don’t appear to be.
Could the answer be that, perhaps the Standard is just a reminder of another era? One where we had to pay for papers and spent time traveling home reading detailed analysis of the day’s stories? Sure, this will be what some people want, but it would appear that most people prefer the more tabloidy, more celebrity gossip fueled and less taxing journalism of the free papers. After all, at the end of a long day reading a series of serious essays isn’t always top of your agenda.
Which leaves the new Standard editor with a problem of targeting, how to maintain its image as the paper of culture, taste and so called ’serious journalism’, while still tacking the free papers? I have no idea what will happen but it’s certainly going to be interesting to see the changes (or perhaps read all about it… sorry).
Saying sorry for someone else’s mistakes is easy – just as David Cameron used it to attack Brown last month. http://tinyurl.com/cwg895
However, the real battle for the hearts and minds of Londoners begins now.
Saying sorry is making a promise for change. Now Geordie Greig has grabbed our attention we need to see continued improvement in the future.
Saw this ad on the tube this morning and wondered initially who the hell was saying sorry to me. It wasn’t at all clear. Just this silly logo in the corner of the ad which I vaguely recognised as the Evening Standard logo. And therein lies the problem. The Evening Standard is actually arrogant enough to assume that people instantly recognise their logo and care enough to think they are really great guys for apologising for being a rubbish newspaper. They don’t. The world has moved on. There are now two OK-ish FREE papers (actually I think London Lite is the better of the two but that’s a slightly controversial opinion) and I can’t see why ANYONE would buy the Evening Standard. Editorially it is quite lazy, lacks any real imagination (far less than its free rivals) and I don’t think it reflects the views of true Londoners. I bought it recently for the budget coverage expecting insightful reporting. I could have read much better coverage on the web hours earlier. The home supplement used to be OK but I guess that is suffering now. I think it’s very sad but I really can’t see a future for The Evening Standard unless it massively reinvents itself.