Someone must have complained to the folks at News Corp about their poor coverage of the WH Smith Supanews takeover story. As I noted when I wrote about this…..
The ‘corrective’ story they published at the weekend still has problems. First up, News Copr. Needs to stop referreing to our businesses as paper shops. We’re ot paper shops.
The Courier Mail report sought comment form the ANF:
Alf Maccioni, chief executive of the Australian Newsagents Federation, agreed the traditional corner store newsagent would survive the arrival of WHSmith.
Mr Maccioni said WHSmith was only likely to open new outlets in major shopping centres, where the rents were prohibitive for independent operators anyway.
I am not sure why the ANF would say this or if the Courier Mail has misreported. WH Smith in the UK is in malls and on thehigh street. As readers here would know, they have recently launched a new franchise model for independent newsagents that is gaining considerable traction in the UK. It’s called WH Smith Local. I looked at it when in the UK a few weeks ago. I’d expect WH Smith in Australia to leverage all of their platforms from the UK.
The growing presence of WH Smith in Australia is a wake up call our channel needed. The question is whether newsagents have the strategy to deal with this.
In addition to disruption to print, migration of lottery products online and the drop in commission on agency lines, newsagents are also challenged by misrepresentation of our businesses, what we are capable of and the services we provide.
For a channel so connected to the media it is disappointing that reporting too often misrepresents us.