Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

The Sunday Tribune have launched an new online edition. They claim the benefits of this new initiative are:

• Instant delivery
• Easy to read
• Advanced navigation
• Searchable text
• Portable
• Environmentally friendly

Sounds good, but the Tribune have proved to be rather short-sighted with their venture. All they’ve done is literally converted their print edition to an online edition and that’s it. There’s no pull to subscribe to the online edition, the only added value is that it’s more convenient.

You can get a sample copy, but it’s awkward enough to sign up for it. Since I had already read the print edition, I didn’t bother requesting it. That says it all really. Since I have no reason to get the paper unless I want to reread it, the electronic version has no other benefits to it.

For a paper that isn’t performing well, one would have thought that they would have tried to be as creative as possible. Forget the LA Times Wiki debacle, other media outlets are beginning to embrace tools like RSS, blogging or podcasting. By offering additional value to their subscribers, users would be encouraged to go online. More importantly, in terms of positioning it would go some way towards reviving a flagging ship.

In terms of the basics that the Sunday Tribune offer, there’s nothing there that their competitors have available. If they want to go down the subscription route then they should have followed the lead of the Irish Times. In terms of getting regular subscribers, RSS is starting to show that it can do the business in terms of building a regular following. Such an approach would have paid off better dividends than doing nothing more than effectively offering a pdf.