The 'hybrid model': can Northcliffe buck trends with part-paid, part-free papers?

Redundancies, falling sales figures - even the once much-lauded freesheets aren't immune to the crises affecting the newspaper industry.

Yet amongst the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) figures for regional media titles last month, Northcliffe announced a rise in circulation for its Kent titles of 3.8 per cent for the period of January to June this year.

This growth went against the wider trend for local and regional media, which posted an overall circulation fall of 7.8 period for the same period. It also follows Northcliffe's adoption of a 'hybrid model' for a number of its Kent publications, including the Medway News, East Kent Gazette Series, Canterbury Adscene, Whitstable & Herne Bay Times and the Folkestone Herald series.

Under the hybrid model some Northcliffe titles in the Kent area are available to buy and then delivered for free, door-to-door, 24 hours later.

The changed distribution model, brough in over the last few months, has been part of wider changes since the titles were acquired by Northcliffe in July 2007.

But Northcliffe is not the first to introduce a hybrid model: the combination of a part-paid for, part-free newspaper, was pioneered in the UK by the Manchester Evening News (MEN) in 2006, Within the first year display advertising revenue at the MEN was up 8 per cent, editor Paul Horrocks told the Guardian in 2008.
 
Will the group follow MEN's suit and convert positive circulation figures into advertising revenues? Journalism.co.uk spoke to Steve Lowe, commercial director at Kent Regional News & Media (KRNM), a division of Northcliffe Media, to find out more.

Differences
"What's very different is the quality of the paper we've tried to produce  - we've almost thrown away the 'traditional free' [model]," he says.

After gaining confidence from the success of two hybrid titles in Kent, Lowe says Northcliffe extended the range of hybrid titles in the region, while also redesigning them. This enabled KRNM to give greater attention to producing high-quality editorial with more detailed local news, specific to the circulation area, he says.

The editorial to advertising ratio echoes that of paid-for titles, rather than of traditional free newspapers. They are not full of press releases and old news, he adds.

As part of introducing the hybrid model, Northcliffe aimed to provide 'a more community feel' to the newspapers, devoting more pages to editorial than before.

"We aim to be the paper where we break the news for the area first, where people turn to for what's going on for campaigns. All of the things that a journalist would call 'important values' in a newspaper are carried by our titles even though in some cases, lots of copies go out free through letterboxes," he says.

"We've got the best of both now: if we sell more copies, that's a benefit and circulation goes up; if the paid-for sale is under threat, because of changing buying habits, we've got a number of free copies to move around - so we have the right number of copies to meet demand."

Advertisers
As well as introducing a greater focus on editorial, Northcliffe's hybrid titles changed their classified sections, making them common across titles within a specific circulation area.

"As the economy is starting to show signs of improvement, we are now seeing our revenues start to move forward fairly healthily. For us it was a case of getting the portfolio right for when the economy turns round so that we're geared up for growth," says Lowe.

"Looking at it from a different angle, our revenues didn't fall apart because of the changes that we made. There was always the risk that we would turn off advertisers by changing our newspaper offering so dramatically but we haven't."

New model, new look
In March, Northcliffe announced plans to create a centralised production hub for its south east regional titles, which has overseen a design overhaul of the hybrid newspapers. Lowe says he attributes the success of the hybrid titles, in part, to the centralised hub.

"It's driven quality on a consistent basis," he says.

"We've had loads of positive feedback about the way that the papers look from a design point of view, particularly from readers who feel we've moved a long way in terms of reflecting local life better."

The new Chelmsford production hub for Northcliffe's Kent and Essex titles created 20 new jobs - has the hybrid model also brought new opportunities for journalists?

"I don't know whether we'll be in a position to be creating new jobs in the next 12 months," he says.

"[But] will there be better job security? Yes. Job security in the regional press is as good as it has been for a long time - we've got work to do, we're in a challenged marketplace, but we feel we're better placed than we were before."

The future
If the hybrid model continues to be successful, Northcliffe will consider introducing the same system for titles in other areas, Lowe explains.

It could be argued that the improved figures for Kent are a result of changes in content and design and not the hybrid model. But Lowe says it is unlikely that Northcliffe would revert back to separate paid-for and free titles for the KRNM division.

"From my point of view we're starting to get it right and I think we're better placed now than when we started this journey six months ago," he says.

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