Newspaper Innovation

For a mid-size capital, Lisbon is well served with free newspapers, as there are five different titles available to the public every weekday. Total circulation is almost 700,000 – more than 50% of the total newspaper market.

These numbers are even more surprising because free newspapers were only introduced in Portugal in November 2004 and also because the country always had a rather low percentage of newspaper readers, with 600,000 copies of paid papers distributed and the population being over 8 million (3.5 million households).

Monday morning I was handed two free dailies at the subway entrance (Destak and Global Noticias), picked up Metro from a rack in the subway and found Meia Hora and OJE at the conference venue. In total 124 pages of free dailies on a Monday morning.

All of them – except business paper OJE – had Sporting Lisbon’s victory over Porto in Portugal’s football cup final on the frontpage. OJE, however, had it on their back page, a page devoted to sports.

Destak was introduced in November 2004 and has editions in Lisbon and Porto. Portuguese publisher Cofina (Correio de Manha, business paper Journal de Negocios and sports paper Record) has a 59% stake in Destak (with option to buy 100% in the future).

Circulation of Destak is around 180,000 while daily readership is more than 600,000. This Monday’s Lisbon edition counted 28 pages, 16 (57%) filled with ads (including the front page), quite a lot of them mid-sized classifieds. The paper also had a page devoted to discussions and letters to the editor.

Metro, launched in January 2005, is comparable to Destak in terms of circulation and readership. This Monday’s edition counted 24 pages, almost half of it (46%) devoted to ads, again including the front page. Metro contains a daily syndicated comic: Sherman’s Lagoon, and a letters-to-the-editor page. Metro is published in three editions (Lisbon, Porto and regional).

Meia Hora, the third Portuguese free daily, started almost a year ago and was branded as a ‘quality’ paper, with longer stories, more journalists and targeting a higher demographic. Distribution is more by drop-offs in office quarters and universities. The Lisbon edition counted 16 pages, with only 3 of them with ads (20%) although it had a special ad insert by Asus computers. Notwithstanding the promises, stories are hardly any longer in Meio Hora (meaning half an hour) although the design is definitely more like a ‘classic’ newspaper, less colors and more restrained with graphics.

Compared to 2006 and 2007, readership of both Destak and Metro went up, but compared to the last quarter of 2007 both paper lost readers. Also Meia Hora lost readers compared to Q4 2007 (208,000 in 2008, 241,000 in 2007). This is probably caused by the launch of free daily Global Noticias in September 2007.

The last entry is already branding itself as the newspaper with the highest circulation (200,000) in Portugal, although this is not officially audited. Within one year Global Noticias is reaching more than 400,000 readers a day. The model is somewhat different from Destak and Metro. In distribution Global Noticias is more targeting the suburban subway stations in greater Lisbon so people have more time to read while competition is less. This distribution is more expensive but in a crowded market it seems to have some success as well. This year the paper started a Porto edition as well.

In terms of content the paper is leaning heavily on other papers from Controlinveste, also publishing Diario de Notícias, Jornal de Notícias, 24 Horas and sports paper O Jogo. All these papers are cross-promoted in Global Noticias by highlighting stories from these titles and using articles from these papers as well. A third of the 24 pages were filled with ads and there also were quite a lot ’sponsored’ stories in the paper.

OJE is a free business paper launched two years ago. Its circulation is 26,000 and its readership is almost 60,000 in 2008. Distribution is through drop-offs at office buildings, hotels and universities. Design is clear and ‘classical’. It counted 32 pages, 7 of these filled with ads.

For some months Portugal even had a free sports daily Diário Desportivo, but it was only published in the first half year of 2007.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Titles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.