Exclusive: Thousands of unread Sydney Morning Herald copies at university
Video footage shot by Mumbrella has raised a series of questions over the distribution of Fairfax Media’s Sydney Morning Herald.
Yesterday afternoon, Mumbrella discovered thousands of unread copies of the SMH at the University of Sydney’s Wentworth Building.
Mumbrella understands that more than 3,500 copies a day of the paper are delivered to the university throughout the year, with a large number of those copies not being removed from their pallets until being taken away for recycling every Friday. It is not currently term time at the university, meaning there are few students around.
I reckon if you visited other universities you could find the same thing happening there too.
Busted!!!
It would be interesting to see/check if 3500 University of Sydney students and staff have signed up the Tertiary Card program?
There’s an easy solution to this. Have two different columns on the ABC numbers – one for full price copies and one for other types of “paid” copies.
That’s a lot of pallets of print – a lot of waste compared to a few thousand page views…….
When I was at UTS, the only reason I got a SMH subscriber card was because I got the weekend Herald delivered to my house for free as part of it. I never picked it up at uni during the week.
Great story Tim.
It would be interesting to look at the thousands of magazines that are sent out to businesses each week/month that stay in their plastic sleeves. We get them all the time and request that they not be sent. However, they continue to be delivered and go straight into our recycling bin.
Cheers
Simon
Love it Tim.
Crikey!
This has been going on for years.
While i was a student I used to work for the Melbourne Uni Student union in the loading bay. We would inevitably throw out about a pallet load of Herald Sun copies at the end of every day.
To my knowledge there are more than 3500 subscribers to SMH through their Tertiary Card. So yes, usually most of these papers, during semester, would be collected. However, considering many students are not on campus full-time and the system works on a collection (rather than home delivery) process demand would be difficult to predict.
Perhaps Fairfax should look at an online subscription for Tertiary students to pump up their online ad value? (And save a few trees.)
Ditto KT.
I was, up until a month or so ago, a post grad student at Monash who was lucky to make it to uni once a week, usually after hours.
During my ~$50 yearly subscription to The Age through the Tertiary program, I never once picked up a weekday copy, using it only to get the weekend papers delivered cheaply. I wonder how many of us are there?
Show me someone under 25 reading a newspaper & I’ll show you my unicorn.
So the papers started banking up on a week when there are no students at uni. Big deal?
Cheating eh? Shameful.
Unless the Uni’ is to blame?
ummm, does anyone read newspapers these days? anyone under 50 that is?
The industry is finally waking up to the fact that despite all the chest beating about the Australian newspaper industry doing better than the rest if the world, in the rest of the world a “paid” reader is someone who’s actually paid for the product.
My guess is that if the same standard was applied here, the audited circulation numbers would halve overnight.
There’s no doubt that print media is in decline, however it still commands an impressive chunk of the ad revenue pie. It is still a form of mass media and should not be completely cast aside. Yet!
It’s easy to pass comments “ireaditonline – who reads them anyway” like that, however a sample size of one isn’t always terribly informative or accurate?
That said, I can’t remember the last time I purchased a newspaper, all my news I get online from a reliable global source. I have also seen stacks up on stacks of papers at key universities as well as office buildings and know that they end up in the bin still in their cling film. This is a sad story for advertisers not having a clear and realistic picture on READERSHIP. Circulation is an empty number I feel, accurate delivery of readership figures (and I’m talking more than just opening the front page) is the way forward but impossible to deliver. This is why more and more people are looking to online .
The revenue pie there is growing…TV and print are shrinking, that’s where the money is going. It will be some time before we see a mass medium like print dissappear….however I feel at some point it will happen. My opinion of course, but the next generation aren’t paper buyers. They consume an alarming amount of online content and this will continue to grow.
Wow sorry guys, EPIC post! GO SAINTS!
Hi anonymous 13,
You quite rightly ask if it’s a big deal.
My information was that a large number of newspapers remain on the pallets whether or not it’s the holidays.
But, as I see you’re posting from a Fairfax IP address, perhaps you can better answer that one than me?
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
@ Clara – clear off (no, just joking, I am also going for the Saints)
DING!
Um, are you telling me that modern day university students actually read a phyiscal newspaper? Are you serious?
wow that is an incredibly interesting expose! great work tim!
always wonder about stuff like that.
why don’t they just give them away for free then!?!?!
Hey Tim, what IP address am I posting from?
I really like getting my free copy of the SMH at Fitness First every morning (well, most mornings) but there’s piles of unread copies sitting in the gyms every day as well
When will people learn Tim is a master IP tracker.
Yet another fail. Almost as epic as the new video site not being html5.
Fairfax, please hurry up and die so a private buyout can clear out the deadwood leading your venerable organisation into oblivion.
It’s not that hard to ‘get’ digital. It’s a lot harder to lie, cheat and steal (without getting caught).
What a boring post. Seriously. However I can’t help but be drawn in, because newspapers do that. still. And will still do it for a long long time.
I always get a laugh when people say that the print medium will be dead soon. And that THESE ARE THE SIGNS!
This isn’t the biblical, this wasn’t foretold.
However your article does one great thing, it shows how more investigative people are getting. How studies are and research is getting better and that the old process of adding numbers can’t hold, because you’ll be found out.
I don’t think papers have declined half of what people think. It’s just that the research metric has changed from the old one and they were never as high as people thought, just not qualified enough.
As someone who once worked on newspapers, and now doesn’t, the power of them smashes many other sources and is much easier to get on the media schedule for that same reason.
Anybody who knows anything about print media research knows that it is extremely flawed and designed to inflate the numbers – even more so than any other medium. Long live digital!
@Riarn Sure, that would be a boring post, except that it’s clear the focus of this piece is about circulation numbers being misrepresented to advertisers, not about the death of print media.
@ Anon 27 – No-one would use HTML5 for an online video solution except as a compliment to a Flash version. 98% of browsers (ie, anyone who isn’t using an iOS device) support Flash, only about 36% support HTML5 video.
Say what you like about Fairfax, their digital team is absolutely getting it right.
@ Tom – right you are, Fairfax Digital rock! – and Tim can verify that my IP address is not from Fairfax.
Agree with Tom at #31. Of all the leprous, festering, falling-over bits of fairfax, the digital unit is far and away the best (or least worst, given that we’re talking Fairfax). You have to wonder how much better the Fin review’s online presence would be if only the board had placed it under the supervision of Matthews & Co. Given that it has no presence worth mentioning, the answer is obvious.
It’s a pity someone wasn’t at the Melbourne Show last week, sponsored by the Herald Sun. Two years ago, every visitor got a copy of the Hun as they entered, with rubbish bins conveniently placed to receive them the moment the “paying customer” cleared the turnstile. Don’t know if it was going on this year (I didn’t attend), but as the HUN remains a Show “partner”, there is no reason to believe it wasn’t the case. They all do it, in other words, but Fairfax is as bad at cheating as is it is at publishing, so it gets caught more often.
Fairfax’s only hope is a buyout and a broom to sweep out the executive cadre. One example, gleaned over a beer with an Age contact: When Catalano launched his mag, anyone working or contributing to the Age who also had any involvement with him was told to get lost — no more work for you at fairfax.
If companies have death wishes, fairfax is the case study.
I don’t see this as Fairfax cheating on their circulation numbers, it’s simply a case of someone not reducing the number of papers at the University during the Semester break. No cover-up, no big hoo-ha, just a case of a small miscalculation in their distribution department.
Why are people so quick to rush to slamming Fairfax?
I agree with NA. They can’t just stop delivering papers to studnets because it’s semester break. People still come in to study. If the same thing goes on during the year, which it probably does, then that would be a real issue.
Go to a university during the semester, you will find the same
Love how this inevitably turns into a print v digital debate. Tiring.
It’s a tough one, NA. Maybe people feel misled.
On a not entirely unrelated note, why are you talking about Fairfax in the third person when you’re posting from a Fairfax IP address?
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
UnFairfax
Just how many past and present Fairfax staff are actually commenting on this???
Here’s your clue, Ash… If the person commenting thinks the whole thing’s a storm in a teacup and it’s okay to charge advertisers to be in papers a reader will never see, you can probably guess where they’re from.
Just on a side note Tim, did you get permission to film on campus? As this could be considered trespass, no? Getting very Ben Fordham like … 🙂
UnFairfax…. That’s awesome
First, I don’t work for Fairfax
Second, surely a few extra newspapers scattered around the place (Uni, gyms, offices) isn’t the biggest issue for Fairfax.
Of course, dumping papers appears a little disingenuous
BUT
more copies of the newspaper has got to be good for advertisers
Gives them potential to reach more readers, extend their reach,
and it’s the advertisers who are paying for the newspapers….
And maybe it could attract future newspaper readers?
So, you can’t be too upset with fairfax for trying to save their business model, right?
I worked at a well known, large university for a time and know for certain that publishers contact the university to provide ‘subscriptions’ for students.
These subscriptions are for ridiculous prices, often free with membership of the student body.
I also know for certain a vast number of papers went unread as the students didn’t even bother to pick them up. Papers were also delivered during school holidays. Why?
To boost circulation. I’ve heard it from the horses mouth, and witnessed it myself. Well done for exposing this Tim, it’s a farce what they do. And as someone working in advertising now, knowing how much money is spent on print I feel clients should be aware they’re getting ripped off.
You should see how many they try to distribute at the SFS during game days.