The National aims to break even in 2013

The National newspaper aims to reach break even point in the next four years and double its advertising revenue in 2009, its publisher said on Monday.

The newspaper’s editor in chief, Martin Newland, said the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, which launched in April 2008, had never had an “open-ended chequebook”, despite being backed by the government of Abu Dhabi.

“We have a break even plan, we always did,” he said. “This is something which has strong backing. It is meant to change things and it’s meant to change journalism, but don’t think we are off the hook from making money.

“The first thing is to create the thing, the second and third is to put wheels on it, so this is no open ended chequebook job.”

The daily newspaper, which is owned by the Abu Dhabi Media Company, has 270 journalists, including 40 foreign correspondents, and is largest newspaper in the UAE.

The English newspaper made almost AED70m in advertising revenues between April and December last year, said Gavin Dickinson, the executive director of publishing at the Abu Dhabi Media Company, adding that the paper had a five-year turnaround plan in terms of breaking even.

“[The advertising revenue] is probably a fair start but a tiny amount of money but it was about getting this product into people’s hands. The budget for this year was written as more than double that and I think we’ll do very well to match it,” he said.

“Advertising [in this region] started becoming this monster to the point where you could pick up any one of the Arabic dailies, English broadsheets and would see nothing on page one, two, three or four. We have had to turn away a couple of million dollars in opportunities to wrap the front page to bag the newspaper.”

In the past year The National has built up a subscription database of 10,000 and aims to reach 50-65,000 in the next three years, said Dickinson.

“This is not a retail sale market like it is in the UK or the US, it’s a subscription market,” he said. “We are just short of 10,000 subscribers in a year….I am looking for a circulation of around 50-65,000 within three years.”

Newland, the former editor of The Telegraph in the UK, said such a newspaper required constant investment. “You have to remember newspapers like US Today, which before its current collapse was the most successful Pan American newspaper, started out as a huge loss maker. I think it cost $1bn in old money and took ten years to get onto an even keel.

“Newspapers are not going to get launched and [just] run along; they take constant nurturing, investment and care.”

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