The Globe and Mail has a new dog in the ongoing fight for readers in a tough newspaper market.
The national daily is introducing a new bulldog edition of its “Report on Business” section that will be accessible as a digital replica the evening before it appears in print.
Subscribers are able to access the bulldog edition of the next day’s business section in PDF form at 9 p.m. each night. A screenshot of the free app appearing on iTunes proclaims “Tomorrow’s news. Tonight” (a rejoinder to the oft-quoted criticism of newspapers as “Yesterday’s news. Tomorrow”).
Globe executives declined interview requests regarding the launch, but a direct mail piece recently sent to senior executives “from the desk of [publisher and CEO] Phillip Crawley” said that it would help subscribers “get a jump” on the next day’s business decisions.
“It’s a newspaper seeing an opportunity and getting a product out there,” said John Hinds, CEO of Newspapers Canada. “People will pay for premium content, and the Globe feels that with Report on Business, it’s got premium content people want to pay for.
“The reality is that the ROB is, in many ways, the bible of Bay Street, and obviously people want to get that heads-up,” he added. “Obviously [Globe management] has done its research and feels that is what it can do.”
There are a “limited” number of subscriptions available; subscribers won’t be able to share their subscription, Crawley said in the letter, noting that additional subscriptions would be available for colleagues.
A bulldog edition is a small print run that appears prior to the publication of a regular daily edition. It is said to have had its origins in the New York newspaper wars of the 1890s, but is still used today by some daily newspapers, including The New York Times.
Neither Newspapers Canada or its U.S. counterpart, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), could say how many bulldog editions are currently printed in North America, or even when they were last in vogue with publishers.
The launch of the Globe’s bulldog comes as newspapers seek out additional revenue streams to offset significant declines in readership and advertising. Last year, the Globe introduced a new paywall system for its website that limits users to 10 free articles a month before encountering the paywall.
In February, the Globe reported that it had 80,000 subscribers for its “Globe Unlimited” product, which it sells for $19.99 per month. The online product is free to the print subscribers.
