In defence of Alan Jones: he’s still resonating — but with anti-lockdown and anti-vax viewers

Alan Jones has been dropped by Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph, which claims his columns are no longer resonating with its audience. But is this true? All available evidence points to no.

On Thursday, Nine papers reported that Tele editor Ben English had told the long-time shock jock that the News Corp tabloid would no longer take his column.

Jones disputed the idea that he wasn’t resonating: “Have a look at Sky News YouTube, Sky News Facebook and Alan Jones Facebook and you can see. The same column that I write for the Tele goes up on my Facebook page.”

It’s possible for both these ideas to be true: Jones can both be blowing up on social media — where the potential audience is enormous and the reach global — while also not drawing the interest of the The Daily Telegraph’s primarily NSW-based audience. 

Only people who work for News Corp can see just how well Jones’ columns were performing. Metrics — like page views, time spent reading, and subscriptions driven by stories — allow publications to hone-in the value of an author to their audience.

While these numbers aren’t publicly available, there are other numbers that can be used to glean and infer just how much an author is resonating with an audience.

The number of Facebook likes, shares and comments calculated by social media analysis tool CrowdTangle can be a rough proxy for how many people on the platform are engaging with Jones’ content. Facebook link-outs remain a major source of traffic for Australian publishers. 

A look at Jones’ 10 most recent columns show that they received an average of 3065 likes, shares and comments across Facebook; a significant number for any Australian publication. By comparison, fellow News Corp stablemate Miranda Devine’s last 10 columns get on average 217 engagements, and Piers Akerman’s have gotten 373. 

This suggests that Jones’ views are resonating with someone. But what about Tele readers? All the Facebook likes or page views in the world won’t help if a publication is focused on growing its paying subscriber base. 

The number of comments on each article can also be used as another rough proxy. Daily Telegraph articles are paywalled, and only paying subscribers can comment on these stories. While the number of comments an article draws will be influenced by many factors — a poorly written article may draw a lot of frustrated commenters than a persuasive one — it at least shows a baseline for how many paying subscribers clicked on the piece.

Alan Jones comes out on top again. His last ten pieces have received an average 83 comments, more than Miranda Devine’s 59 and Piers Akerman’s 24.

Beyond this, Jones’ claims of an enormous social media reach ring true. Over the past six months, his personal Facebook page audience has grown to 140,000 followers. July has been the biggest month of growth, adding 10,000 followers as he stepped up his anti-lockdown content.

Likewise, Jones’ content has been a winner for Sky News Australia too. Its top-10 Facebook posts of the last month have all been from Alan Jones segments.

By every available public online metric, Jones’ content is resonating. The issue appears to be why it’s resonating. As Nine’s Zoe Samios noted, there have been indications “Jones’ commentary in recent weeks had contradicted News Corp’s pro-vaccination news coverage, and that was likely the reason for the change of heart”.

Jones’ increasingly hardline approach to lockdowns and his embrace of anti-vaxxers on his show — from Craig Kelly to Reignite Democracy Australia head Monica Smit —  has found an audience online. The only problem is that it may be too much for The Daily Telegraph to accept.