december 14, 2004 - philippine daily inquirer prints 2 versions of their front page on fernando poe jr.'s death

on december 14, 2004, exactly 4 years ago to the day, philippine daily inquirer (PDI) printed their newspaper and released it like all other days. or so they thought.

the top news during those days were the health of fernando poe jr, FPJ or "Da King", the hugely popular actor who ran against president gloria macapagal arroyo. FPJ says he won the presidential election, arroyo said he did not. because FPJ was a huge matinee idol with nearly a masa following as strong as that of his best friend ex-president erap estrada, most people thought he won that election, too. to prove his point, FPJ filed an election protest in the courts questioning arroyo's win.

but FPJ or Da King suffered a massive stroke just a few days before and everyone, specially the media was on a hospital watch.

PDI had written on it's front page the headline "FPJ condition turns for the worst", with the subhead, "Wife Susan "remains strong"". the article went on talk about how FPJ is struggling to stay alive and his family and friends were trying their best to cope with the situation.

then, something unexpected happened - FPJ died at 12:15 am, december 14, 2004.

as all other newspapers do, PDI starts to print it's newspapers starting around 11:00 pm of the previous day for the next day's edition. PDI must have printed and distributed some already when they got the news about FPJ's death.
PDI was forced to print a 2nd copy of the december 14, 2004 edition but with a different and more accurate headline : "Da King is dead", with the subhead "Fernando Poe Jr. united nation in prayer during two-day vigil for his recovery"

all other articles and pictures in that front page were the same except for the headline and lead story. they had no choice, it would have been foolish and stupid to just let the "first edition" to be distributed to readers with the "erroneous" headline. it would have most likely caused a riot at most and irreparable damage to the reputation of PDI.

i don't know how many subscribers got both editions, but four years ago, i was very surprised to find in my garage door 2 copies of PDI. i kept those two copies and thought it would make for an interesting talk piece in advertising and media.

newspapers are in the business of transmitting news to its readers. that means accurate news. life and reality will not wait for newspapers, they will just happen. and just like in this case, PDI needed to adjust and do the right thing.

you can just imagine the kind of rush and panic the whole newspapers had to go through to get the 2nd edition in a lightning speed pace. they needed editors, writers, layout artists and the whole printing press on hand between 12:15 am to 5:00 am. the whole printing press and its workers were on stand-by as the editors, writers and layout artists wrote a fresh headline news and story. the distribution people needed to be on stand-by as well as they needed to do a 2nd run.

fernando poe jr. was not just a presidentiable. he was also a considered to be the King Of Filipino movies. his movies during his prime was a sure hit. almost all his roles were about a man with modest means fighting the big guys, the wealthy and the powerful and winning in the end, justice is done. on this day of Da King's death, we publish this blog exactly 4 years to the date, december 14, 2008 at 12:15am.

memo to The Philippine Star : top things to do to take leadership away from the Philippine Daily Inquirer

the philippine daily inquirer (PDI) has been releasing print ads (above) of various sizes touting the latest ac nielsen media index results wher it placed PDI's readership at leadership position at 48%.

something shocked me when i first saw that ad of PDI - it's not that PDI is the readership leader, that was expected and common knowledge, what shocked me was the rating of The Philippine Star (PS) where it scored 41%, damn close to PDI's readership. PDI used to enjoy a wider margin, did not realize the ratings have come so close, a 7 pts spread is within spitting distance.

so given this spitting distance, i thought i would write a memo to PS the objective of which is to give them some ideas on how they can take leadership away from PDI. here are some points to consider:

• the very first thing i would do is to look at the DISTRIBUTION numbers and look for areas of improvements. this i think will yield the most incremental readership for PS. i would do a thorough study of the PS distribution system and benchmark it against PDI. and i would be very thorough about it. i would literally look at EVERY distribution point and discover where the weaknesses are and apply improvements. they should go beyond number of distribution points, more importantly they should look at distribution system and strategy. finally on this topic, i would be creative and add at least a superiority edge of +15% more distribution points versus PDI.
• i would conduct a nationwide research, a combination of quantitative and qualitative researches to find out what readers think of the both newspapers and figure out improvement areas.
• and from that research, i would implement improvements very quickly.
• PS should not hold back in improving or applying changes on the whole newpaper in as many parts necessary - from layout, to writers, to writing style, sections, photos, editorials, etc.
• there is a lot to do but i would be very smart about it and determine which ones to do, drop and what to do first, how much of it and when. these are all very critical as while they may find clear improvements, any one or all can backfire on them. a lot of strategic thinking needs to be applied here.

the above essentially is a consumer marketing approach to exploiting a marketing opportunity that has been laid on a silver platter to the philippine star. doing the above will see the philippine star taking away leadership from the philippine daily inquirer.

notice : the above is protected by intelectual property rights and may not be used, published and printed in part or as a whole without written permission from the author of this blog.

philippine daily inquirer, still no.1 - why you love to hate it

don't you just love to hate the philippine daily inquirer?



it's a national daily newspaper that's good just for a total read of 3 articles at the most! and that usually takes less than 8 minutes to read. it doesn't help that PDI's approach to journalism is actually that of a tabloid that's masquerading as a national newspaper. in my view, the PDI is actually a newspaper version of boy abunda's tv show, The Buzz, with the only difference being topics are on politics and national news and issues and not show business. in PDI, national issues and politics are delivered in a chismis style journalism.

there are many to be said about content and its kind of journalism, but that is straying away from the nature of this blog.

the other part you love to hate in PDI is the over-population of ads!

in today's issue, PDI has, believe it or not a total of 24 sections! that means 24 separate pull outs. there is the main headline section, 22 pages, 1 magazine and 1 comics section and 21 separate pull outs or sections, each pull out consisting of just 4 pages.

and that is one of the biggest things you love to hate about the PDI - the 21 separate pull outs or sections. they use letters to name the sections, and in today's issue, it runs from Section A to Section Q, that's only 17, but some of the sections have sub-numbers, like Section A, then Section A1. perhaps to cut on the number of letter sections? it will be totally embarrassing if they hit Section Z, don't you think? they also cheated, 2 sections they did not put letters on, just numbers. again, it's to save themselves from the embarrassment of hitting Section Z.

it's not just the numerous sections, it's the fact that in each 4 page section, there is only a tiny article or editorial and the rest of the pages are print ads. i would say the editorial in those sections account for a tiny portion while the ads occupy 70% to 85% of the total 4 pages.

ah, now you get it. those sections are actually just ads, not articles or sections with legitimate topics. you could have been impressed, PDI on a sunday has 21 sections, and therefore 21 topics! but no, what PDI is doing with the sections is really just printing classified ads but tried to give it some glamor by calling them "sections", and not classified ads which they truly are.

as a reader and consumer of PDI, that really sucks and is utterly inconvenient. the hardship that a reader like me goes through, like for example looking for the movie section, it means you have to go through 21 freagin sections before you find it! they don't even try to give each section a unique layout or design. not even a decent header to differentiate one from the other.

that makes me wonder - are advertisers in PDI getting their money's worth? let's be honest here - how many readers actually go through each of those 24 sections page by page? after awhile, you get to understand what PDI is doing - when you see a section, and knowing 85% of what's inside is just an ad, will the reader still turn the page and look at the ads? you know there's hardly an article inside, why bother opening the page?

for advertisers, the promise of readership in PDI is actually just a myth, you can get handsome readership numbers in your post buy media analysis, but did actual readers read the ad? i don't really think so.

for advertisers, in the layout that they have now, PDI is a WAWAM!

======================

Inquirer still No. 1 by bigger margin, says Nielsen survey
By Kate
V. Pedroso

Philippine Daily InquirerFirst

Posted 03:01:00 06/15/2008


THE PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER continues to generate the largest readership among Filipino broadsheet readers nationwide, according to the latest survey conducted by Nielsen Media Research.

The Inquirer captured 53 percent of broadsheet readership in the country’s key cities, according to the Nielsen Media Index 2008 Q1. The Manila Bulletin and Philippine Star both got 44 percent.

This translates to an estimated 1.258 million readers for the Inquirer, 1.051 million for the Star and 1.048 million for Bulletin nationwide.