Amolo emmanuel N
OINK!, published on pink newsprint as a nod to the Financial
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| OINK!, published on pink newsprint as a nod to the Financial Times, reached as many as 600,000 readers, many of them receiving the newspaper for free at school. "The newspaper itself was successful, but it didn't make any cash," says Henry, who stopped publishing the newspaper after about seven years in 2009. Henry's advice to anyone starting a children's newspaper is to couple with a major newspaper because financing distribution channels is otherwise too expensive. "Unless you're involved with or have access to the newspaper distribution cartels … you haven't got a chance," he says.
Kruschel editor Fauth says: "Parents want their children to be informed and for them to able to talk about and have their own opinions on these things." Fauth notes that “the cardinal rule of publishing a newspaper for children is: Don't scare them, as there's a children's angle to every news story”. And, as Kruschel finds its stride, it has promising examples to look to abroad. For example, Austrian media house Styria began publishing a children's newspaper aimed at children, called "Die Kleine Kinderzeitung," or "The Little Children's Newspaper," as a spinoff of its conservative newspaper for adults, Die Kleine Zeitung. The paper is free of traditional advertisements, but it is experimenting with products like sponsored animal poster pullouts to bring in revenue. Sarah Jane Thomson founded First News, a weekly UK newspaper for children aged 7 to 14, in 2006 and has since built up a weekly circulation of 53,000 (according to ABC) and a total claimed audience of more than one million (according to internal research). She was told the project wouldn’t work by national newspaper executives – but five years on it still stands. The paper is given out to 8,500 schools a week, more than a third in the UK, and Thomson is adamant that her readers graduate to be fully fledged paid-for readers. But having something in print is the key. Kruschel’s Editor in Chief, Fauth (2012) advices that publisher who wish to embark on the project of specialized newspapers for children, should attempt to sell classroom subscription sponsorships to companies to skirt the advertising issue and pass along the costs of direct marketing through schools. In this arrangement, companies can reach children within the context of supporting literacy, the schools benefit from lesson material, and the newspaper stands to expand its circulation. Download 261.2 Kb. Share with your friends:
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