Next month’s edition of the Journalist – the magazine of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) – will be available only as a pdf from the union’s website.
The experiment is a chance to see which format members prefer, an announcement in this month’s edition explained.
But this is also a cost-saving strategy, as, according to the union, postage and packaging account for 60 per cent of the cost of the Journalist, which costs the NUJ in excess of £200,000 a year to produce.
Members will receive an email alert about the special edition, which will be available for download from March 17.
Good for trees. Bad for postmen and pretty likely to be a disaster for circulation.
The Journalist has a print circulation around four times that of the Press Gazette and has been wasting a major opportunity to fund itself with advertising for years.
Does the NUJ honestly expect 20,000+ people to visit its website, download a PDF and read it on their computers? With this move the NUJ will decimate readership and seriously undermine its main communication channel to its members.
Well done NUJ, you’ve shot yourselves in the foot yet again.
I agree – I think this move will have a negative impact on membership rather than positive, because of the pdf format rather than committing wholeheartedly to an online edition.
The union suffered a net loss of 226 members last year, according to the NUJ’s annual report – the first decline in 7 years.
Would’t it be simpler and better to write the edition as a blog, putting the stories up as you finish them?
Then you could send members a link and perhaps even encourage them to start using feedreaders?
Sorry – its not you. Doh
I agree with Laura. Why make it a pdf? Why not just have an online edition and let members choose if they want a print edition or not (and perhaps pay more if they do)?
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