Newspaper Innovation

At the end of Feruary, the RCS Mediagroup (Corriere della Sera) will close down its free daily – or “freepress” in Italian – City. The economic situation and the drop in advertising are said to be responsible for the closure.

The editioral staff is protesting agianst the closure and has ‘occupied‘ the website of the paper.

City was launched in 2001 in Rome and Milan, and later started local editions in Florence, Bologna, Bari, Naples (2002), Genua, Turin and Verona (2005).

Total circulation of City is 850,000 – making it the largest Italian free daily (together with Metro) after Leggo concentrated its footprint to Rome and Milan. 1.8 million people read City on an average day.

The closure will lower Italian free newspaper circulation to just over 2 million.

In 2008 circulation still was 4.6 million, with 9 different titles published. Since then 24minuti (2009), E Polis (2010) and some local papers closed down while Leggo cut circulation.

Spanish free daily Qué! celebrated its 7th birth last week with a special issue on mobile content, with a huge QR code on the 64-page 18 January issue (download).

Qué! is developing content for video that readers can download by entering the picture on the cover in their smartphone. Also the webpage www.que.es is redesigned.

Qué! – owned by Vocento and local partners – now shares the national Spanish free market with 20 Minutos.

The paper started with 12 editions and a circulation of almost 1 million in January 2005. Six new editions were launched between 2007 and 2009. In 2012 the paper distributes 600,000 copies in ten different editions.

The closure of Danish free daily Urban opened up an opportunity for Denmark’s only free daily publisher Metro International, owning the majority of the two remaining free dailies in the country: MetroXpress and 24timer.

In total Metro expects to win 75,000 to 100,000 readers in the future because of the closure of Urban according to MediaWatch.

Metro does not wanted to take 24timer from the market, but was considering to differentiate between the titles. 24timer could go down in distribution, making it more attractive for smaller advertisers while MetroXpress could increase its print run.

That is why MetroXpress has increased it’s circulation with 25,000 to 200,000 (MediaWatch).

Dutch free daily De Pers celebrates it 5 year birthday today.

The special issue (can be downloaded from here) contains a selection of the best stories that have been in the paper according to the editors. De Pers will also launch a book with stories from the last 5 years.

De Pers wanted to be the largest free newspaper in the Netherlands when it was launched in 2007. It never was (in the first year it had a circulation of 480,000), but its ambitions were substantial.

Print run was expected to grow to one million, while the paper also launched a saturday edition, a financial paper (a test run) and a series of books.

The paper lost millions of Euro’s and cut circulation to 220,000 in 2009. In that year, Marcel Boekhoorn, the owner of De Pers closed a deal with Wegener (Mecom) to print and distribute the paper, and sell advertising for a fixed fee for the next 11 years.

Although the deal was not very profitable for Wegener, De Pers was saved and is now again increasing the circulation to more than 300,000.

De Pers is very different from ‘regular’ free papers. It relies much less on wire copy and tries to build its own agenda with original news.

Commercial broadcaster TF1, the new owner of Metro France, will invest more than one million Euro in the paper, expand to 20 new markets and expects to break even in two years.

The paper will not increase the print run of 760,000 but reallocate 15 to 20% of the copies to new markets. The number of editions will go from 15 to 35 according to new director Edouard Boccon-Gibod in La Tribune.

In 2012 the paper expects a two-digit growth, partly because of synergies with TF1. There are, however, no plans to integrate editorial departments. There are now 115 people working for Metro, 43 of them journalists.

Boccon-Gibod accused former (majority) owner Metro International of not investing enough in the paper. One of the results is that Metro is far lagging behind 20 Minutes when it comes to visitors for the website.

La Tribune revealed also that Bolloré made an offer for the shares of Metro last summer. Martin Bouygues, owner of the Bouygues company that controls TF1, however, did not want his rival and enemy Vincent Bolloré to get hold of Metro. TF1 as minority shareholder had the first rights to buy the remaining stock and matched Bolloré’s offer.

Also 20 Minutes has announced to expand their market, although this will be accompanied by increasing the circulation.

In France total circulation increased from 2.3 million in 2009 to 2.6 million in 2010 and to 3.2 million in 2011.

In March, Metro France will also move to a smaller format and introduce a more colorful design. The smaller format resembles that of competitors 20 Minutes and Direct Matin. Also the Metro editions in the Czech Republic and Hungary use the smaller (half-Berliner) format.

Direct Matin, the free newspaper of the French Bolloré group, will end their collaboration with Le Monde and Le Courrier International.

For the last five years, journalists from both publications were responsible for four pages in every issue of Direct Matin.

From now on, the whole paper (24 pages) will be made by the own staff of Direct Matin. There are 60 journalists working for the paper. (L’Express)

The real thing – in terms of free newspapers – is also available in the Swedish capital.

Traditional newspaper boxes, with the main news of the day displayed on the front, containing the mother of all free newspapers: Metro Stockholm.

Metro started in Stockholm on February 13 1995 with a circulation of 200,000 copies. In 1998 it expanded to Gothenburg, a year later to Malmö. In 2004 a national edition was introduced.

Circulation in 2012 is more than 600,000. The Swedish edition is still one of the most profitable editions for Metro International.

Metro survived national competitors City (Bonnier 2002-2008) and Punkt.SE (Schibsted, 2006-2008). In 2012 there are also local free dailies in Malmö, Lund, Upsala, Norrköping, Kristianstad, Landskrona and Helsingborg. Their total circulation is 120,000.

Although Stockholm is a one-free-paper-town since 2008, the first free newspaper I encountered yesterday was not Metro.

The Arlanda Express train station in central Stockholm had several boxes filled with Dagens Industri, the Swedish financial paper. Normally the paper sells for 30 Kronen (€3.40).

Giving papers away is not limited to Dagens Industri of course. In the hotel I could choose from all Swedish papers (including Dagens Industri) but also the Financial Times was available. Airports are also great places for getting (paid) newspapers for free.

At my university  library I often pick up a free copy of the Wall Street Journal.

Looking at the graph below, the number of closed down free dailies in 2011 seems impressive. In particular the number of closed down editions (76) is much higher than in 2010 (39). The number of titles closed down (10), however, is lower than in 2010 (17).

In fact, three European titles are responsible for almost all of these editions closed: Adevarul de Seara, ADN and Leggo.

Adevarul de Seara, a Romanian free daily with no less than 39 editions, launched between 2008 and 2010 closed down wihin three years, some editions did not even last one year.

ADN, the third national free daily in Spain closed with 9 editions after 5 years of making losses.

Leggo, the leading Italian free daily closed all but the Rome and Milan editions (10 in total) in order to cut costs.

Other closures in 2011 concern Macedonia (2 papers), and 5 local papers in US, Canada and Mexico.

Worldwide circulation of free dailies increased in 2011, because of new launches and increases circulation of other titels.

With the closure of Urban, Berlingske’s (Mecom) free daily in Denmark, the number of free dailies in the country is down to two.Circulation is now 360,000.

Only 5 years ago there were 11 free dailies in Denmark with a total circulation of more than 2 million.

With the closure of Urban, 87 people will lose their job, although Berlingske claims it will be relaunched a digital platform under the same brand.

Berlingske CEO Lisbeth Knudsen says in a press release (via MediaWatch) that the economic crises and the recession force Berlingske to cost savings, and suggests that the closure is also part of the digital and mobile transition strategy of the company that aims for consolidation and acquisitions in the future.

Kundsen suggest that the closure is expansion in disguise: “We have therefore decided to rethink the Urban brand and change it to a whole new and exciting media concept with new partnerships, where digital will play the main role.”

This is obviously crap. Urban has been losing money during the last years, saw fierce competition from the two Metro papers MetroXpress and 24timer and also ‘forgot’ to apply for press subsidies in the past.

Mecom as a whole is losing big money while the Danish part of the company also lost money in the first 6 months of 2011 – in fact only the Netherlands and Norway (about to be sold) showed a profit.

Urban started in September 2001, three weeks after the launch of MetroXpress in Denmark as a defensive move of the publishers of Berlingske and tabloid BT. The first four years showed promising results but after the freesheet-craze hit the country in 2006 (5 national titles and 4 local ones), the paper never recovered.

Metro closed a deal with competitor JP/Politiken, who got 24.5% of the company and handed over their free daily 24Timer. Urban brought back the 7 editions to only 2 and lowered circulation from 240,000 in 2006 to 200,000 in 2011. Readership dropped from more than 600,000 in 2006 to 233,000 in 2011. (See also Aske Kammer’s blog for an analysis.)

The last issue of Urban will be published tomorrow.

How total circulation in Denmark changed can be seen in the graph below (click for enlargement).