The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age weekday compact editions launch today
A new era in Australian newspaper publishing begins today with the launch of the weekday compact editions of Fairfax Media’s The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
The mastheads have also been rejuvenated across digital platforms, with redesigned website homepages and changes to the tablet editions and smartphone m-sites also launched today.
The compact print edition launch is a significant moment in the history of Fairfax Media, enabling readers to engage with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in a more user-friendly print format, while also delivering key benefits for advertisers.
Says Jack Matthews, Fairfax Metro Media CEO: “The launch of the weekday compact editions of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age is a clear expression of Fairfax Media’s ‘Fairfax of the Future’ strategy to transform the company from a from a legacy printed newspaper company into a comprehensive multi-media organisation.
“We have changed our business model to support our readers’ desire to access our content across multiple platforms 24/7. We’ve invested significantly in asking our audience what they would like to see from Fairfax and they have overwhelmingly told us they are ready for a more user friendly, convenient, weekday Monday to Friday print format.
In addition to introducing the compact format for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and just as importantly, we are also significantly enhancing our market-leading websites, tablet apps and smartphone m-sites.”
The homepages for smh.com.au and theage.com.au have been extensively redesigned, based on consumer research that called for cleaner and better organised homepages that are also tablet-friendly.
The smartphone m-sites have also been updated with many new features, including video, photo galleries and content sharing via social networks, while the tablet apps will now include an evening edition from 6pm every day.
Today’s compact edition launch, first announced in June last year, comes after extensive consumer research- including a world-first Neuro Insight study – which found that advertising in the compact format was a more engaging and effective weekday read.
In the research, the compact weekday newspapers delivered 58% higher engagement than the global media average level*. Not only did this compact newspaper format deliver 22% higher reader engagement than the broadsheet newspaper, there was a 50% increase in visual attention to advertising. Advertisers also saw a 9% increase in brand salience/ad effectiveness**.
Research also found that while readers would welcome the change to the compact format, they stipulated that the mastheads must retain their commitment to the quality journalism that has made them Australia’s two most trusted newspaper brands.
Says Ed Harrison, Fairfax Metro Media commercial director: “The results of the world-first Neuro Insight study convinced us that changing the products would create a more impactful advertising environment and even greater engagement.”
Fairfax Metro Media’s advertising partner for today’s launch is BMW Australia, which will ‘Metroblock’ the mastheads across print, mobile, website and tablet in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. BMW will use the launch of the compact editions to introduce the new generation BMW X1.
Fairfax Metro Media editorial director Garry Linnell said that today’s launch would stand as a powerful reminder of the outstanding quality journalism of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Says Linnell: “The shape of the print editions is changing but the content of our weekday papers and their ability to deliver loyal audiences you can’t get anywhere else remains the same. The new Sydney Morning Herald and The Age weekday print editions are easier to pick up, easier to carry around – and much harder to put down.”
Readers can expect to see exciting new features in the weekday compact brands.
Each edition will have an increased number of pages, so no content will be compromised. All key content pillars of news, politics, sport, opinion, world and business remain.
Complementing the existing weekday lift-outs of Good Food/Epicure, Money and The Guide/Green Guide, will be two new sections: ‘Pulse’ a new fitness, health and wellbeing section and a rejuvenated entertainment section ‘The Shortlist’.
Pulse is a smart and savvy health, science and wellbeing section. It will appear in The Age on a Monday and The Sydney Morning Herald on a Thursday and will showcase the breadth and depth of both papers’ health and science reporting.
Regular features will include medical advice, health and science reports, pet care and where to find the best gyms and spas.
The Shortlist is a Friday section which gives readers their ticket to the weekend – it’s all about what to do, where to go, what to see. It will be a weekly guide to the best entertainment in each city. The section covers the pick of movies, music and theatre with reviews, interviews and extensive lists, from the latest film releases, to the best gigs and stage shows, with news, reviews, ratings, recommendations and listings.
Says Sigrid Kirk, Fairfax Metro Media chief product officer: “The move to compact has given us an opportunity to really re-examine our papers, their content and how our readers use them. The compact format fits our readers’ Monday to Friday needs, without changing any of the journalism that makes these papers so trusted and relevant to their markets.”
*The neuro engagement scale is an index score based on the intensity scale of brain activity, with 1 being very high brain activity. The global average score for all media on the neuro engagement scale is 0.5. Compact scored 58% higher than this global average.
**Neuro-Insight research, commissioned by Fairfax Media, October 2012
3 Comments
How the fuck am I supposed to make my pirate hat now?
How can The Age spend so much money researching their move to ‘a compact size’ and end up with such a dull front page. It looks more like a suburban paper. I am an Age reader, but today’s Herald Sun shows up The Age as a paper that has forgotten the first rule. It called a ‘news’ paper for a reason. Dull front pages like this will accelerate circulation loss, because ‘dull’ doesn’t sell anything.
Neither The Age or SMH have tablet-friendly homepages. They’re actually quite ridiculously put together and fail even on a high-powered tablet. Compare to nzherald.co.nz, which actually works and loads without stalling.