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Oct. 13th El Centro: A Mexican newspaper laughs all the way to the end

Here is front page of El Centro’s last printed edition.

Double page shows memorable front pages from the newspaper’s short history

Send off the clowns

It was funny to the end. El Centro, the vibrantly young and colorful newspaper of Mexico City, has said “adios” with a funny cover, complete with a clown image and a headline that read: “Nos cargó el payaso”—-Mexican slang for “We are ruined, we are lost, or the clown fell on us”

Perhaps it was a way of taking its own misfortune as lightly as it had taken a variety of other subjects, or maybe a way of showing us a lesson—-even when things are tough, and not so happy, one can keep laughing, including laughing at oneself.

Yesterday we talked about fun and humor on Page One, El Centro showed us that it could be done.

Why did El Centro fail?

This is question many of you may have, and one that I posed to Luis Adrian Alvarez, Visual Editor/News of the San Antonio (Texas) Express-News, who sent me the last issue.

El Centro was published by Editorial Notmusa, who also owns and publishes the Mexican sports daily, Record.

Here is what Adrian had to say:

I ignore the precise details why El Centro failed. However, in a big metropolitan market like Mexico City, where there is an overabundance of printed newspapers——with more than 20 dailies competing with each other—and with such high production costs—-this daily El Centro was expensive to produce, with color on every page and a large staff. This economy could not support it, perhaps. In addition, just like in the US market, we have a constant migration of readers from print to the Internet. Remember that El Centro published daily its entire edition as pdfs on line.

Many readers probably felt like me, why buy the printed edition, when I can access it online? In a country where the majority of the population survives working with very low salaries, and where the minimum wage is around $150 monthly, for many it comes down to a choice: do I buy a newspaper or a liter of milk and a loaf of bread.”

For pdfs of the last edition of El Centro:
http://www.centrodc.com.mx/centroWeb/viewEntrance.do?webPagDate=2008-10-11

For Spanish-language readers: El Centro’s closing attributed to the economy

- Mexico: Atribuyen a la crisis cierre de periódico “El Centro”
http://www.elsemanario.com.mx/news/news_display.php?story_id=11211

From IFRA Conference: The Future of News Publishing
9-10 October 2008, Villa Carpegna Jolly Hotel, Rome

Here is an interesting quote from Mikal Rohde, Vice President, Strategy and Business Development,
Schibsted ASA, Norway, a speaker at the IFRA Conference. We agree with him about the future, where he envisions a media landscape with general content as a free commodity, but a rise of what we have described here as the “elite” press, with exclusive, engaging, analytical content, for which there will always be an audience willing to pay, either online or in print.

Rohde maintains that while printed newspapers’ circulation
declines in mature markets, such as Europe and North America, the opposite
is true of online “consumption.”

“General content will be free and a commodity, while excellent and
exclusive content will remain highly appreciated. Aggregation services
will grow and new external services will be added on top of the content
newspapers create. Advertisers will demand effectiveness for ad spending
via content relevancy – context, geo-targeting, behaviour and demographics
– and new business models will change the roles of players.”

For more information:

 

 

 

Mario to speak in Amsterdam Oct. 17

I am honored to be part of the World Association of Newspaper’s 11th Readership Conference, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Oct. 16-17.  The program is built as The Audience-Building Conference for Publishers, Editors, Marketeers and other Senior Executives..  The conference includes a keynote presentation titled The Eternal Power of Print (Why print will endure beyond the digital revolution and remain a part of our private and business lives forever! The business implications for media publishers of a bright future for print.) by William Powers, media columnist, National Journal magazine (Atlantic Media), USA .

My own presentation is titled A Successful Audience Strategy and will deal with the path of the story in a multiplatform world and focusing on specific segments of the readership.  I will have coverage of the conference in this blog next week as it happens.

For registration and full program information:
http://www.wan-press.org/amsterdam2008/home.php

In Lagos, Nigeria, thru Wednesday, then off to Amsterdam.

TheMarioBlog posting # 119

 

Posted by Dr. Mario R. Garcia on October 13, 2008