Phuket Gazette to stop print edition of newspaper locally, reorienting hard-copy production for wider market in The Nation

John Magee

 

An extract from the front page of Vol 1 Issue 1 of the Gazette, launched 23 years ago in May 1994. Phuket was gorgeous but that was not news locally, and there was no Web, so the paper remained monthly in the first four years of its life.

 

PHUKET: It's like Grandma’s little drinking problem. Everyone knows, but people don’t much talk about it. And so it goes with the publishers of hard-copy newspapers these days – worldwide. We know where print is headed, so the only real choices are whether to get out now or, say two years from now.

We’ve opted for the former, meaning that the paper, launched 23 years ago in May 1994, will no longer be distributed as a standalone publication here, with effect from the end of this month.

But readers will find a ‘Gazette Lite’ going out to a vastly larger audience as a Phuket-dedicated supplement in The Nation every weekend.

With rising revenues in the Gazette Online and irreversible flatulence in small-scale hard-copy newspapers (those with print runs of less than 10,000), the decision to channel our resources out of local print and into a broader readership has not been difficult.

Commercial advertisers in the Gazette with print preferences will continue to be well catered for amid our Phuket pages in The Nation, giving that content an audience roughly eight times what is possible in Phuket and the Andaman. Our advertisers will of course also retain their presence aboard the 12 major international airlines into and out of Thailand (both Bangkok and Phuket airports).

 

Full story: http://www.phuketgazette.net/phuket-news/Phuket-Gazette-stop-print-edition-newspaper-locally/66588?desktopversion

 

 

 

-- © Copyright Phuket Gazette 2017-05-14

 

 

 

I think it's about time.

 

Who still reads paper newspapers?

 

The last time I subscribed to paper newspapers, was when I lived in Bangkok.I got both Bangkok post and the Nation.

 

After moving to Phuket I was keen to subscribe to Phuket Gazette, which was the first newspaper I read in Thailand 5 years before. It had become an advertising platform with very little news. 

 

Over the years PG improved again, while Phuket News got down.

The news and island insights are interesting. Promoting properties is not.

... I thought some of the writers had promise...