On the back of yet more rumoured newspaper circulation figure declines in 2012, South Africa’s leading business and financial publication, Business Day, has today launched an aggressive online strategy.

Business Day has today launched BDlive‚ a new flagship offering and Business Day digital product suite‚ comprising a website‚ iPhone and iPad apps, and a mobile site.

The move follows international trends set by newspapers like the New York Times and sees Business Day position itself to break news, rather than report on it when the paper is published the following day.

Newsrooms around the world have had to find new ways of presenting and distributing their content as readers’ consumption habits change. The key strategy is to keep its readers informed no matter where or how they consume the news.

Peter Bruce‚ editor of both BDlive and Business Day newspaper:

We are going to use our reporting and editing power at Business Day to create the country’s premier live business website and associated applications on the iPhone and iPad.

He continued that the digital product suite would continue to deliver news‚ analysis and opinion of a calibre unrivalled in the country.

Memeburn points out:

Digital subscriptions on the New York Times have grown 12% since March to 500 000. While that growth didn’t drastically increase revenue for the newspaper, it did help circulation revenue pull even with adspend. As the number of subscribers grow, that will only increase.

There are parallels with Business Day. Both target a well-educated, relatively high-income readership. That readership is willing to pay for quality content. But if Business Day’s going to make its digital offering work, then that emphasis on quality must come above everything else.

Bruce continued:

We will begin to publish what we know when we know it on our newly designed website first, and make the newspaper after that. Then, a few months after that we’ll wrap a mesh around the website and the applications (apps, they’re called) we have on iPhones and iPads and our stories — our product — will be for sale as BDlive.

As a newspaper in the long term, unless we do this, SA can kiss goodbye to its own stand-alone daily business newspaper. No industry I know of has been hit on as many fronts as the newspaper industry in the past decade. The financial crisis has throttled advertising.

The internet has changed the technology of news delivery beyond recognition. BDLive will leak like crazy. There’ll be stories for free even before we ask you merely to register and more before we ask you to pay us anything. In print, we will change dramatically, but over time — after a day of reporting on the web there is no point repeating it all the next morning.

So expect not only a different and exciting newspaper in our digital future, but a different kind of newspaper — reflective, forward-looking and planned.

It’s fair to say Business Day probably won’t be the only publication opting for this kind of strategy as South African media consumers move with the times.

[Sources: Bizcommunity, Memeburn]