The Hull Daily Mail published its first newspaper on September 29th 1885, knowing it was entering a big market. By the 1900s, the Hull Daily Mail’s readership was steadily growing and moved to a new office, away from the one on Whitefriargate, on Jameson Street. In 1930, The Evening News, the Hull Daily Mail’s last remaining rival, closed down and left the Mail as the only evening newspaper in the region. At the same time, news appeared on the front page, replacing small advertisements. In 1941, the Hull Daily Mail suffered a direct hit during a German air raid. During the blitz, the Hull Daily Mail continued to publish news, even though the main office had been bombed. In 1963, Northcliffe Media takes over the ownership of the Hull Daily Mail, and the ownership has not changed since. In 1989, colour print was introduced, and the Hull Daily Mail relocates to a new office at Blundell’s Corner on Beverley Road. In 1998, the Hull Daily Mail enters the first stage of digital production, by launching its website “This is Hull and East Riding”. In 2006, the Hull Daily Mail becomes the first newspaper in the country to use video journalism on its online website. In 2009, the regional production designs a new production centre at the base at Blundell’s Corner.
Looking at the Hull Daily Mail newspaper and the online version together, you wouldn’t expect that it is the same organization. There aren’t many similarities simply because one is an online version and has things that a newspaper cannot have, such as the adverts, RSS feeds, and scrolling headlines.
The name of the online version is “This is Hull and East Riding”, which bares no similarity to “The Hull Daily Mail”. When people look at the title of “The Hull Daily Mail” they expect the paper to just be about things that happen in Hull, whereas inside the paper you have stories from across the most of East Yorkshire. The title is misleading, unlike the online “This is Hull and East Riding”, which is blatantly obvious that it appeals to the most of East Riding.
The front page stories of the Hull Daily Mail are striking, like “Death Crash Pilot Is Cleared”, and are mostly about something shocking. This is similar to the online version where the headlines are at the top, scrolling through important stories such as “Hull man rescued from neighbour’s roof after cigarette house fire”. The only difference, an advantage to the online version, is that you can see more stories. In the online version there are three stories constantly scrolling through, whereas on the print version you only have one major splash.
A similarity of both versions is that both have an extreme amount of advertising. If you open the print version, there is an advertisement on the front page at the bottom, and then inside the paper there are advertisements on almost every page. On the online version, when you open up the home page, you are hit with four advertisements for different shops and events in Hull and East Yorkshire. This is good for the advertising companies as they can reach a large percentage of people; both people who see the online paper, and the people who read the print newspaper.
One thing that is a disadvantage to the print newspaper is that if you want to find a specific story, you have to search through the pages for that one story. There are a lot of stories on a page, four or five, and you end up wasting time looking for that one story. On the online version, there is a search bar at the top where you can search any keyword or story and it will come up quickly, saving a lot of time. For example, if I put “schoolgirl death” into the search bar, it comes up with the results for stories that fit that criteria.
Both versions have a big similarity that makes all the difference to the readership. While there seems to be less people buying the newspaper and more looking the news up online, both versions of the paper still have a high amount of readership. People who get the bus or train to work will often buy a newspaper to read on the journey, or they will read one that people leave on the seats, and there is a large amount of people who actually do this. However, there is a high amount of people who have contract smartphones, therefore having internet most of the time, and these people are the ones who check the news on their phones, and you will find that the site actually has a mobile site for people to check the news. This is good because if people see the full site on their phones then they usually cannot see anything, and so has to zoom in all the time, which wastes the time they are using to check the news.
In conclusion, the Hull Daily Mail print and online versions of the paper are completely different. Both bare some similarities, like the colour scheme or the stories they write up, but in general there are more differences than anything else.
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