Newspaper Innovation

The merger plans for Irish free dailies Metro and Herald AM are now officially confirmed. Metro Ireland is owned by Associated Newspapers, The Irish Times and Metro International. Independent News and Media, publishers of paid paper Evening Herald own Herald AM.

The new paper will be called Metro Herald, Metro International will sell its share in the company. All other shareholders will have one third of the business. The merger still has to be approved by the Competition Authority.

The circulation will be around 70,000 copies - the same as the current circulation of both papers. (Irish Times)

More and more free dailies close down for the summer. In Sweden Metro - now the only free daily available - started its summer holliday this week. For five weeks the Swedes will go without free dailies.

The last editions of free Spanish newspaper Qué! in Alicante and Vigo (see left, click for bigger view) were published yesterday June 30 as was expected.

The free daily, once publishing editions in 16 different markets in Spain is now down to 10 editions: Aragon, Asturias, Castellon, Rioja, Navarra, Madrid, Malaga, Sevilla, Valencia and Bilbao - the last edition, however, was not available today as well.

Five of six closures took place in 2009, Murcia was closed down last year.

After years of meetings and bad feelings between paid and free newspaper, the Austrian circulation audit organization ÖAK will include data about free newspapers as well.

In August the first ‘complete’ data will be published, meaning that also free newspaper Heute will be included. (Der Standard)

French free daily 20 Minutes developed together with Citizenside a “Your Images” (Vos Images) section were readers can upload their pictures and videos to the website of 20 Minutes.

The new webside was launched on June 20 and is also meant to stimulte users into citizen journalism for 20 Minutes. Michael Jackson’s death and the Gay Pride event in Paris were most featured in today’s edition.

According to Spanish media website PRNoticias, publishing house Vocento will close down the Vigo and Alicante editions of Qué! on July 1.

Also the Sevilla edition is being considered for close down but because of the high readership of this edition, this decision is postponed according to PRNoticias.

Last week the publisher already closed the A Coruña edition (see previous post).

Metro Denmark, publisher of free dailies MetroExpress and 24timer, will employ the online advertising sales company Xlife Media to sell advertising on the websites of both newspaper (metroxpress.dk and 24timer.dk) and for the newsletters of 24timer and Club Metro. (MediaWatch)

Free daily Metro still has the highest circulation in the Netherlands with 530,000 daily copies in Q1 2009, compared to 2008 (average 533,000, Q1: 553,000) it went down in circulation.

Competitor Spits (De Telegraaf Media Group) increased circulation to 460,000 from 430,000 in 2008.

De Pers had an average circulation of 307,000 in Q1 (367,000 in 2008) but already cut down circulation in recent months to 200,000.

Spanish publisher Vocento closed down the A Coruña edition of its free daily Qué! The last edition (left, click for bigger view) was published on June 23.

The only remaining Galician edition is no published in Vigo.

Earlier this year also the Cantabria and San Sebastian editions were closed down. (AEPG)

The A Coruña edition was launched in 2005 and had a circulation of almost  30,000.

City Stockholm, the former free daily from Swedish publishing house Bonnier, will be ‘integrated’ in the Bonnier Magazines group from August 2009 on. In the process 33 jobs will be lost.

Stockholm City was launched in 2002 to compete with Metro in Stockholm. In 2006 editions for Gothenburg and Skåne (Malmö/Lund) were added. The Gothenburg edition closed after little more than a year in 2007.

City Stockholm was converted into a three-days-a-week (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday) paper in September 2008. In April of this year the Wednesday edition was terminated.

In 2008 local City editions for Helsingborg (successor of Xtra! Helsingborg, launched in 2007) and Landskrona were added. These editions are published in cooperation with Helsingborgs Dagblad. Also the Malmö/Lund edition is still published.