A Competitor Analysis of the Newspaper Industry

1. Newspaper Industry
Team 2
Market Review
Niall Maher 11497488
Rachel Moore 11466328
Andrew McCabe 11397916
Thomas Owens 11425368
Constantin R Oprisan 11434962

2. Introduction
 Independent
 Irish times
 Irish examiner
 Sun
 Star

3. Market Background
 Market size:
 2.88 million adults read a newspaper
daily
 According to a survey carried out by the
National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI)
the Irish newspaper industry made
€829.68 million in revenue in 2011.
 Trends:
 Between the years of 2009 to 2012 there
has been a decrease in the number of
people buying a newspaper daily.
 Key players:
 Broadband and the continuous
introduction of new technology in
regards to Smartphones.

4. Profile of Organisations
 Founded in 1905 and it is currently Ireland’s
largest selling newspaper as it is published 7
days a week.
 Founded in 1859, an Irish broadsheet newspaper
that is published 6 days a week.
 An Irish broadsheet newspaper, founded in 1841
under the title “The Cork Examiner” until it
changed its name to the Irish Examiner in recent
years.
 A daily tabloid newspaper founded in 1963
which is published in the United Kingdom and
Ireland.
 Founded in 1988, it is Ireland’s number one
paper for people aged between 15-44 years old.

5. Website Review
 The Irish Independent
 Easy to use and to find top news
stories, with a convenient menu bar
allowing easy of access to information.
 The Irish Times
 Similar in style to The Irish
Independent, a drop down menu allows
users to quickly obtain information they
want.
 The Irish Examiner
 Laid out in a more traditional manner.
However, it has adopted a useful style for links
to different areas, with pictures as links rather
than a lot of words.
 The Irish Sun
 Very much based on pictures. Showbiz is one area which they have appearing regularly on the home
page of the website.
 The Daily Star
 Simple and straight forward to use, with good use of quick links and tabs, allowing readers to easy read
stories of interest.

6. Social Media Review
 The Irish Independent has the most
followers on Twitter. Their Facebook page
has got the complete history of the
paper, from the beginning.
 The Irish times were more unique in their
social media as they have a news blog
with a number of blogs which they have
written throughout the day.
 The Irish Examiner had the best twitter
page with links to various stories on their
website.
 We found that the Irish Daily Star had the
most attractive Facebook page.
 The Irish Sun is one of the popular
newspapers on Facebook as it is liked by
over 17,000 people.

7. Mobile Review
The first review we chose to do was the
Irish Examiner.
Irish Examiner was the only paper which
didn’t have an app for mobile devices.
We can clearly see that the results from the
analysis of their website review for mobile
devices shows that it is not user friendly.

8. Boss Metrics Reports
Facebook Analysis
Company Fans PTAT PTAT/Fans %
Avg. post
per day
Average likes
per day
The Irish
Independent
18,056 330 1.80% 2.2 10
The Irish Times
53,419 1559 4.80% 5.55 26.8
The Irish
Examiner
10,867 270 2.50% 3.58 11.2
The Irish Sun
17,589 253 1.40% 4.53 2.4
The Daily Star
639 5 0.80% 5.9 0.1

9. Boss Metrics Reports Contd.

10. Boss Metrics Reports Contd.
Twitter Analysis
Company Followers Following
Avg. Tweet per
day
Avg. reply per
day
The Irish
Independent
34,216 78 49.9 1
The Irish Times 41,057 35 28.7 0.1
The Irish
Examiner
28,566 147 14.4 0.3
The Irish Sun 994 20 4.9 0.1
The Daily Star 850 64 24.4 0

11. Boss Metrics Reports Contd.

12. Report Promotion
• To express our work on the Irish
newspaper industry we put it onto various
websites like:
Facebook
Twitter
Slideshare
Wordpress
Socialmedia.ie

13. Conclusions
 Newspapers use websites, social media and mobile apps to
get their news to their readers
 Given the reduction in the purchases of the physical
newspapers, the industry needs to turn their attention to
promoting their papers through other means, for example
through Facebook, Twitter, and apps.
 We revealed that the Irish Examiner’s readership is
suffering due to lack of advancement in technology
compared to the others.
 The introduction of technology has increased the papers
target markets and created diversification for the customer.