How Ian Kehoe saved the SBP’s sinking ship

Irish journalist Ian Kehoetook up the mantle of Sunday Business Post editor in October 2014 in the midst of an era of examinership, crippling debt and uncertainty. Over the course of five years the papers circulation figures had plummeted from a robust 57,783 copies per week to a paltry 32,498 meaning revenue was nearly halved. Since Ians inauguration as the Sunday Business Post editor one year ago, he has managed to turn the future of the Sunday newspaper around, seeing it right out of examinership. The Wexford man rose to the challenge, in dealing with new management, by finding ways to produce great content and stabilize sales, all while having far less resources than his predecessor at his disposal.   So how did he do it? Ian had been given commitment from the owners that if they could get things going and get the money coming in, they would feed it back into the paper. Stabilizing sales and boosting ad revenue was of course the best way to do that.   1) He brought great staff on board A piece of advice Ian had received along the way suggested that investment drives revenue, which must have stuck with him for he went on what could only be described as a hiring spree. In his own words he describes it as: a very difficult time to hire, no matter what way you looked at it, we were either in examinership or coming out of it and people were understandably cautious. Ian first port to call was to persuade top business correspondent Tom Lyons to join the paper. Tom, who had previously worked as a senior business journalist for the Irish Times newspaper, choosing to write for the SBP showed a real confidence in the paper and Ians ability to rescue the sinking ship so to speak. A number of other top journalist including Ian Guider, James McNamara and Francesca Cummins all came on board soon after. Speaking about the appointments Mr. Kehoe said: Pound for pound I think we have the best bunch of journalists of any paper in the areas we wanted to concentrate on.   2) He distinguished the paper from its competition The Sunday business Post knew what it was and what it wasnt and Ians very concentrated approach as far as remembering whom their market was and the demographic they were trying to target, proved highly successful. He acknowledged that the Sunday Business Post is very much niche within a niche and used that to his advantage in separating it from the other Sunday newspapers. One of their main priorities was putting lots of time and effort into getting the right people and coordination of the paper to ensure people are getting a good read and as a result sales for the first time in a long time are rebounding slightly. The end product of an overly saturated newspaper market means that it is necessary to fight for every single sale. This is something Ian knows too well and discusses at length in our podcast.   3) He adapted the traditional layout structure People are getting more and more of their daily news online. Mr Kehoe believes that this is less out of convenience or a wish to sample content for free, but rather because its superior. Of course with digital editors having more at their disposal than print editors ever did, content such as the integration of comment, analysis, opinion, news and features, has become better than ever. The Sunday Business Post have changed how structured the paper is by being flexible about what stories go where. They put what the readers want first, thus breaking the traditional model of placing only hard news stories on the front pages. Look out for the new SBP website rollout which will be arriving over the coming weeks. Sarah O Brien,@Sarahobjourno