The Weekender published its final edition on Saturday. There were bits of The Weekender that I loved and others that I was not crazy about, but you could say that of any print publication. One thing was certain, Saturday newspaper reading was a far more pleasant experience when it was at hand.
I loved Alex Parker’s car column, a fine example of which was published on Saturday. Somewhere near paragraph 20, the car gets a mention.
I liked the fact that this newspaper took politics seriously, even if it sometimes strayed from neutrality.
I loved the idea of a politics page attached to a personality. It started out hot but ended up being passed around among too many predictable analysts who lacked the irresponsible bite you get from a free-spirited journalist.
It’s not good when you get the feeling that a columnist starts settling a host of personal scores in their copy. It’s a turn off.
Peter Bruce doesn’t need a lecture on this from some whippersnapper from a tabloid called The Times, of that I am absolutely sure.
I know it must have been a long and difficult road for the editors and publishers as they tried to get this product traction in the market while the recessionary wolves were yapping at their heels.
My own experience from my involvement in the launch of The Times is that much of the newspaper industry, the journalism professors and the media analysts all wish desperately for your failure. If you produce good readership numbers, they question the research. They make up costs you don’t even have on your budget and publish them as fact. They will use your copy without attribution. Believe you me, it’s a hack eat hack world out there.
But there were some things that could have been done differently to save on costs and improve distribution. Why didn’t they just convert Friday’s Business Day into a special weekend edition? There would have been no increase in distribution costs and the weekend does, after all, start on Friday, not Saturday.
Why did they opt for the Berliner size which limited them to one press option? A lack of competition for the print contract might have pushed up costs.
Why did they launch a paper with no active online dimension? This is no longer an option in an era where readers – yes, even the readers The Weekender was cultivating – expect interactivity and multimedia augmentation.
At the end of the day the country, the newspaper industry and journalists are all the poorer for the demise of The Weekender.

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