So Farewell Then SunNation

Back in March last year, Rupe’s downmarket troops at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun launched a new standalone website. As the Guardian reported at the time, “SunNation.co.uk aims to be ‘loud and disruptive and influential’ as the paper during the general election campaign”. SunNation was “offering a lighthearted take on politics that readers do not have to pay to access”.

The less than totally riveting fare on offer soon passed before my inspection, and the conclusion was that SunNation was a waste of time for all concerned: “it’s low-rent Tory Party propaganda, rehashed to appeal to some mythical ideal Sun voter somewhere who has probably already made up his or her mind. No wonder it’s free to view”. But on ploughed the Murdoch faithful, to very little effect.

Several hacks were put to work full time on SunNation. This did not improve the quality of the product. The Twitter feed derived much of its following from other Murdoch journalists and even then was lagging at less than 4,500 by the end of March. In the months since then, despite all the resources thrown at it, the same Twitter following has reached the giddy heights of just under 9,000. It has been a complete flop.

This has at last been conceded by the Murdoch doggies, as the Guardian told yesterday: “The Sun drops standalone politics site … Sun Nation, launched as a ‘loud and disruptive’ force before the general election, has been absorbed into the main website now the paywall has been axed”. Clearly it was not “loud and disruptive” enough. So what kind of excuses were on offer to counter this failed waste of time and money?

The official and suitably optimistic line is “With the Sun’s online content now freely available we felt it was no longer necessary for a standalone politics site, but the same brilliant political exclusives, funnies and virals will still be available”. Sadly, though, what that does not say is that the Sun’s main website is also in trouble. Despite being made free to view, traffic has not increased as had been expected.

Last October, it was revealed that “The Sun has suffered its first fall in web traffic since moving to relax its paywall as its site saw average daily visitors fall by 14% to 1.1 million in September … News UK’s website, which decided to relax its paywall and resume official traffic measurement in July, has now slipped back behind Express.co.uk which fell by just 0.03% month on month to 1.2 million average daily visitors”.

Behind the Express? In seventh place? With a mere 12% of the Guardian’s traffic? Down 14% while the Guardian increased its figures by over 11%? And there was another fall in December, although at least the Sun managed to climb to sixth spot, behind MailOnline, Guardian, Telegraph, Mirror and Independent. All of which means that the closure of SunNation is part of a wider failure by the Murdoch empire.

It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch. Bye bye SunNation.