Green shoots and leaves II
17:03 UK time, Thursday, 20 August 2009
How do you measure a green shoot?, part two.
Earlier this week, we launched .
On Wednesday, we discussed some of your suggestions for measuring trends in transport - the number of bikes in the bike shed, for instance, or the number of bunches of forecourt flowers bought.
Today we look at your thoughts on newspapers.
Dan Kendrick of Worcester thinks the thickness of local papers would be a good measure. "As businesses' cash flows struggle, they advertise less, and so local newspapers cut their page numbers to keep print and production costs down proportionately," he says, and presumably the same is true of non-local newspapers. Tim Aikens thinks so, saying: "As economic activity rises, the number of pages in the Sunday Times Appointments Section always goes up. It is a fair indicator of the state of the economy. Loadsa pages loadsa money!"
Mark Edwards, from Dunedin, New Zealand, agrees. "As the recession has bitten, the number of adverts has dropped, so newspapers have to cut back on their print runs, and so the average daily thickness of the daily newspaper drops. My local dropped from around 40 pages on average to about 28 - it's now up to the mid-30s again."
Mark, Jersey, narrows it down a bit, suggesting that the numbers of classified adverts in local papers would be an indication of how prepared people were to sell unused items to earn some extra money.
Klarien Masters of Sydney says: "My economic indicator has always been the number of job adverts on a particular international IT recruitment website. I have run the same search criteria for years (my speciality) and have seen the number fall (as jobs dry up, agencies fold, companies reduce advertising expenditure) from over 600 to less than 200 over the past two or so years." Sounds like a useful source of data, but perhaps it wouldn't quite have the specific angles about the position in the UK that we'd find most useful.
Jon, London, suggests that the number of non-free newspapers discarded on public transport is a measure of something, and Sarah, England, thinks the ongoing recession is going to make comic and magazine publishers load their publications with more free gifts.
All good thoughts. Any further refinements to any of these ideas welcome via the Comments field. Tomorrow our colleague Anthony Reubens will be writing more about the sales of baked beans, and here in the Monitor, we'll be thinking about sick.
Comment number 1.
At 21st Aug 2009, Lester Mak wrote:True what they say about thickness of papers, but there are seasonal variations. Metro seems a bit thin in recent weeks as many have gone on staycations (= fewer commuters = less people to advertise to).
What about inside the papers? In London, the morning financial freesheet, City AM has a Bill of the Week column every Monday, which features the (potential) over-exuberance of city workers in the form of the final bill at various restaurants. I can't help but note in recent months, the bills have got a little smaller.
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Comment number 2.
At 24th Aug 2009, Casey_boxes wrote:lestmak - a thinner Metro is more likely to be becuase Metro staff are on holiday!
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Comment number 3.
At 25th Aug 2009, Woolfbane wrote:In magazines (sales of which usually hold up quite well in a recession as an "affordable treat") the advertising pages contain fewer, bigger ads, as advertisers get a good deal on the cost of space.
In the personal columns, more ads appear from women looking for partners (free dinners out) whereas fewer men advertise (those expensive dates I guess!).
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