Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1520
- 1539)
WEDNESDAY 16 JANUARY 2008
Ms Rebekah Wade
Q1520 Bishop of Manchester:
To take the point seriously, if you were to drop Page 3, would
that lead to a lowering of sales?
Ms Wade: It is an interesting question. I have
no idea what would happen. I love Page 3 and so I would not drop
it, but I do not know what would happen.
Q1521 Bishop of Manchester:
Do you ever get people writing in, in terms of a feeling that
there is a lack of dignity, discrimination against women?
Ms Wade: Only Clare Short, and I wish she would
stop writing. It tends to get a bit boring now. Our Sun
readers love itboth male and female Sun readers.
In fact they come on the holiday with us. The girls come on the
holiday as well as 40 or 50 people from The Sun, and they
get a very good reaction from some readers.
Q1522 Baroness Thornton:
Clare Short is not alone. In fact, there are a lot of women, millions
of women in this country, who do find Page 3 embarrassing, if
not offensive. I just want to put that on the record. Clare Short
is absolutely not alone.
Ms Wade: Millions?
Q1523 Baroness Thornton:
Yes, I think so. The surveys that were done about that showed
that a lot of women would prefer not to have to look at naked
breasts as part of their daily news diet.
Ms Wade: Then they do not need to buy The
Sun, do they?
Q1524 Baroness Thornton:
I do not want to have an argument with you about that, but I do
not think that you should take it for granted that there is a
consensus view about naked women in a daily newspaper, because
there is not.
Ms Wade: Yes, but I was talking about the consensus
in The Sun. If you want to put on the record that millions
of people do not like Page 3, then I would like to put on the
record that millions of people do7.7 million, to be precise.
Q1525 Bishop of Manchester:
So you never get any complaints from your readership about a particular
photograph on Page 3ever?
Ms Wade: No.
Q1526 Bishop of Manchester:
You did hesitate then.
Ms Wade: Yes, because I was trying to be very
frank with you. There are some girls that are more popular than
others. If Keeley has not appeared for a few weeks, then absolutely
we can get some complaints; but, of course, no one who buys The
Sun is going to write in and complain about Page 3. There
cannot be many people in the country who do not know that the
Page 3 girls are on page 3 of The Sun every day.
Q1527 Bishop of Manchester:
Let me turn to some of the stories. You have talked about celebrity
and some of the things that maybe you and Mr Murdoch disagree
about. Can you give any evidence of particular occasions when
a story that you have decided to put into The Sun has really
boosted the sales, and you think, "Gosh, that was a good
idea! I'm glad we did that"?
Ms Wade: Yes, I can give you lots of stories
that have boosted sales or have seen a sales spike. I am sorry
to repeat what my colleagues have already told you, but breaking
news stories for examplewe see enormous spikes at The
Sun there. During the 7/7 bombings, the next day our circulation
rose by 360,000, which is a huge figure on one day. I think that
is because, in the midst of breaking news, 24-hour news, there
was no one in the country or the world who did not know what happened
in London on that terrible day; but obviously the next day the
readersand we had a 340,000 or 360,000, I cannot remember
whichwere coming in to The Sun. They were not normal
Sun readers; obviously it is a sales spike. They were probably
readers who may normally buy it once or twice, and literally everyone
went in. I think that was to see the analysis: what happened;
why it happened; what the latest was. In this media world, if
you want to hear the latest you turn on the television in the
morning and you get the breaking news, but there is still a critical
place for newspapers in explaining very big, serious and, in this
case, tragic stories. So I am very keen to keep splashing with
the news.
Q1528 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
Before I ask my own question I want very briefly to go back to
a question that was asked on young readership, which seems to
be falling. I do not think that you answered that.
Ms Wade: No, I am sorry, I did not.
Q1529 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
It was a particularly important one, because we certainly have
evidence of where the young are trying to communicate with each
other about news, make it up as they go along, say what is in
the paper is rubbish, and all the rest of it. It would be interesting
to hear what strategies you have towards aiming at getting more
young readerswhich presumably, once you get, you believe
you will keep for some time.
Ms Wade: It is quite interesting at The Sun.
I do not know if you have done this as part of this process, but
the average reader of each newspaper is worth your all looking
at. The Sun has the youngest average reader age of any
of the newspapers, which you would probably expect. So already
we feel that we are a young paper at heart. What you are seeing,
though, is a migration of young readers to The Sun Online.
That seems to be how it splits. Out of our 300,000 daily unique
users, 70% of them will be under 35very different to the
newspaper. I think that, with online, we are bringing in young
readers to The Sun world, so to speak; so that again is
our strategy. I think that it would be very wrong to turn The
Sun newspaper into a paper just aimed at that youth readership.
Q1530 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
Perhaps I may now turn to my particular question. It is really
to work out what are the criteria which determine what stories
do get into your newspaper. You have given us some pretty good
examples of the sorts of things that you are interested in; that
you know your readers are interested in, and therefore you give
them these stories; and your own social policy interests, and
so on. Give us a bit more explanation.
Ms Wade: On the process of how a story
Q1531 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
Yes.
Ms Wade: In terms of the production sense or
in terms of news judgment?
Q1532 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
What are the important ones that get in?
Ms Wade: For example, last week is quite a good
thing to talk about. The Sun has become or is certainly
the paper for the troops. We back the troops in all areas: whether
it is better kit or rehabilitation. We have just been running
this campaign called "Help for Heroes"; we are still
running it. Already, we have passed the £1.5 million and
that is to build a proper rehabilitation swimming pool at Headley
Court. So when I say that we are the paper for the troops, we
are sort of a favourite. Last week, one of my journalists, John
Kay, discovered that contaminated blood had been given to our
troops by the American medical facilities. In my view, when he
came to tell me that he had this story, first of all we are the
paper for the troops; secondly, it is an incredible investigation
that he got; and of course it was on page 1 of the newspaper.
By the next day, the day we ran the story, it was leading the
BBC news. Each story is judged on a whole set of criteria.
Q1533 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
That is a very good example. The second half of what I wanted
to ask is this. Do you think it is more difficult to cover the
serious issues than it was in the past, on politics, foreign issues
and so on, and do you think that it will continue to get more
difficult, as perhaps there is more interest in trivia?
Ms Wade: No, I do not think that it is difficult
to cover serious stories, certainly not more than it used to be.
In fact, with 24-hour breaking news and the modern technology,
you can get foreign or serious news from pretty much anywhere
in the world. You saw how all the newspapers covered the assassination
of Bhutto. Every single TV channel had cameras there; we had the
photographs. It became very easy. At The Sun we do not
have a correspondent there, but we were able to splash on that
story and devote six pages to it the next day. It is actually
easier to cover foreign news.
Q1534 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
If I may say so, those are so dramatic that they were obviously
going to be covered by everybody. I am thinking of the important
but not quite so prominent stories.
Ms Wade: As I mentioned before when the Bishop
of Manchester was asking me about sales spikes, I find that Sun
readers are very interested in serious breaking news stories.
I do not think that it is any more difficult to cover that. We
still have a great many journalists at The Sun who are
out there every day; not sitting in the office but out there,
trying to find stories. It is a broad picture in The Sun.
You can probably find every story in the Telegraph today
in The Sun tomorrow, bar an exclusiveevery breaking
story. It may be projected in a completely different way but it
will be there.
Chairman: Perhaps I could break in, because
we are in the last ten minutes now. Lady Eccles.
Baroness Eccles of Moulton: I think that
the question on journalism has pretty well been answered.
Q1535 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick:
I have a straight business question. Could you set out for us
the figures on the breakdown of your income that comes from traditional
sales, as compared to online and marketing?
Ms Wade: At the moment, as I said, the economic
model to look at for the purposes of this inquiry is still the
newspaper, but we have seen a change in circulation, cover price
revenue and advertising revenue. Ten years ago you would see a
60-40 split for cover price revenue versus advertising, and that
has now become more or less 50-50. Reading the transcript of the
other editors who have been here, I think that is pretty much
industry-wide. Moving forward, we are seeing enormous growth in
revenue coming in on the internet, on The Sun Online,
but unfortunately this is from a base of practically nil. Those
growths are quite stupendous, when you see the growth is up to
78%
Q1536 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick:
In one year?
Ms Wade: There are these kinds of huge numbers
that you see all round for the internet. I am talking about when
you see Google, Yahoo or, when anyone is talking about online
advertising revenue, you see these great figures. For us, these
great figures do not mean that much when you are starting from
such a low base. Yes, that will change and, yes, at those rates
of growth, in 14 years' timegoing back to the earlier questionI
may be sitting here, or hopefully not, with a very different economic
model. However, at the moment, the newspaper remains the
most profitable with that cover price/advertising revenue dynamic.
Q1537 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick:
Do you have a projectionbased on your desire, as you said
earlier, to attract the youngest readers and their own continuing
use of internet readershipthat allows you to become ultimately
a financially driven internet newspaper?
Ms Wade: We do have projections, but they are
all projections and this is a new model, so yes, we have a set
of projections, yes, we have a set of targets that we would like
to achieve and so far we are doing that, but long term, which
is what you are asking, I cannot be detailed and say, "This
percentage will come from the internet". It will be significant
in 15 years' time or 14 years' time, but still right now it is
the newspaper that makes the money.
Q1538 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick:
I notice sometimes on my Blackberry, which is Vodafone-provided,
that when I go on to the Vodafone information services sometimes
The Sun is the news provider, not every day, so I do not
understand why you are some days and why you are not on others,
but do you buy into that relationship or do they buy you in?
Ms Wade: We have obviously done some deals,
as you see, with Vodafone and it is a sort of symbiotic relationship
really between the two companies. We wanted to have a strategy
at The Sun that the newspaper was the best of, that the
on-line was more of and that the mobile was instant, so, whichever
platform you went to, we had a clear strategy of what they were
going to be and that is how the mobile came up, so, rather than
do a text alert, you can actually and literally right now, while
you are sitting there, go on to The Sun and see what we
have done on-line and how we have changed up. The `more of' came
from the fact that obviously with the Web you can do as many pages
as you want, whereas in the newspaper you are restricted, and
the `best of', The Sun has to be the best
Q1539 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick:
Is the editorial stance between the three different?
Ms Wade: No.
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