Newspaper Innovation

Metro International launched a Metro edition under the name of Publinews in Ciudad de Guatemala today. The paper is published by a joint venture with Grupo de Emisoras Unidas.

Metro will hold a 25 percent equity interest in the joint venture operation with an option to increase the shareholding in the future. The Guatemala edition will be operated as a franchise.

The new edition in Guatemala is the first step in Central America and will be used as a hub for future expansions in the region according to the Metro press release.

The new edition is the first free newspaper in Guatemala. It will have an initial distribution of 84,000 daily copies and will be hand delivered Monday to Friday by distributors at strategic locations to reach the target audience.

Metro is already available in Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico.

Bonnier’s free daily City in Skåne (Malmö/Lund) has split this week into two separate editions for Malmö and Lund. The first Lund edition was published Monday 17 January.

This spring also an edition for Kristianstad will be launched according to a news item on the Bonnier website.

With these two new editions, the number of City editions will rise to five as there are also City dailies in Helsingborg and Landskrona since 2008.

The history of City is a curious one, as the first edition was launched by Bonnier (Dagens Nyheter / Expressen) in Stockholm in 2002, as a very late response to Metro’s success (since 1995) in the Swedish capital. The paper never made any profits, and when also Schibsted (Aftonbladet) launched free daily Punkt.SE, the position was further threatened. Punkt.SE closed in May 2008 when Schibsted bought 35% of Metro. Bonnier changed City Stockholm in September of that year to a three days-a-week paper; in 2009 one publication day was dropped.

The Gothenburg edition was already closed in December 2007. Only the Malmö edition survived while Helsingborg and Landskrona were added in 2008

In June 2009, the local government in Perth (West Australia) asked for a bid for exclusive distribution rights for a free afternoon newspaper in the city.

Apparently no publisher made a bid for a daily, but Murdoch’s News Corp., publisher of The Sunday Times, recently launched free weekly PerthNow, using the same name as the news website, launched in 2006. The paper counts 36 pages and is published every Wednesday.

Perthnow claims the paper is “supported by the City of Perth” but fails to explain how this support is organized.

The only daily newspaper in the city now is the West-Australian.

Today the first editions of Metro Haaglanden will be published in The Hague, the Dutch government seat, and surrounding cities.

The edition will count 50,000 copies and will be Thursday-only.

Metro Holland also publishes (5 days a week)  Amsterdam and Rotterdam editions.

The new edition (right) has the famous The Hague comic ‘Haagse Harry’ character on the cover, wondering about The Hague getting a Metro (as there is no subway in the city).

Luxembourg free daily Point 24, published by Saint Paul (paid paper Luxemburger Wort), launched a free afternoon paper today. The paper is printed in a smaller format and is only in French (the morning edition is in French and German).

The edition closes at 15:00, from 16:30 the afternoon edition (16 pages) is available in the state capital. The paper will be published until Christmas. Circulation is unknown so far (source and picture: Luxemburger Wort).

Iceland is the European country with the highest number of free daily copies per 100 inhabitants (35). It has two paid dailies (Morgunbladid & DV) and one free daily Frettabladid. In 2006 the situation was reversed: two free dailies and only one paid paper.

Mergers, relaunches and restructuring after the financial crisis hit the island, left Frettabladid with a somewhat lower circulation (87.000 against more than 100,000 in 2008) and publishing ‘only’ 6 instead of 7 days a week.

Jón Kaldal, former editor of Frettabladid, increased competition again by launching a free weekly in the country in October. The paper is 100% owned by Kaldal and five other co-workers.

Fréttatíminn has the ‘newsy’ look and feel of a daily and counts no less than 72 pages. The target is to fill 55% of the paper with ads. So far, six issues have been published on Fridays.

It has a circulation of 82,000 copies, and is home delivered in the greater Reykjavik area and in Akureyri, the biggest town of N-Iceland. The paper is also available at 70 gas stations in Iceland.

On October 4, a new free daily for Mexico City was launched: El Nuevo Mexicano.

The paper is directed by Javier Solórzano Zinser, a well-known journalist in Mexico.

Circulation is unkown so far.

On the website a pdf-version of the paper can be downloaded. Stories can be shared on Twitter and Facebook.

On YouTube the launching movie of the paper can be viewed.

Metro Brazil will  launch a fifth edition in Rio de Janeiro and expand circulation in the country to 330,000 copies. Metro will surpass paid daily Folha de Sao Paulo as the paper with the largest circulation in the country.

The Rio edition has a circulation of 100,000 and will be delivered by hand at strategic locations in city. Metro Brazil is majority owned by Grupo Bandeirantes; Metro International owns 29.99% of the operation.

Metro Brazil launched in Sao Paolo in 2007; in 2009 ABC (Greater São Paulo: Santo André, São Bernardo do Campo and São Caetano do Sul) and Santos followed; in April of this year Metro launched in Campinas.

Left the first issue of the 11th edition of French free daily 20 Minutes (click for better view) that was launched last week.

The Montpellier edition was already the third edition of 20 Minutes launched in 2010, after Nice/Cannes (March) en Grenoble (May). Joint circulation of the three new editions is 70,000.

Total circulation of the eleven 20 Minutes editions by Schibsted and Sofiouest (Groupe Ouest France) is almost 850,000.

Metro, launching three editions this month, has a circulation of 750,000.

The joint VillePlus editions (local paid newspapers and the Bolloré group) have a circulation of almost 700,000, while Bolloré’s Direct Soir distributes around 350,000 copies.

France does not only shows an almost permanent growth in titles, editions (34 now) and circulation (2.6 million in 2010 against 2.4 million in 2009) but also saw only one edition close down ever (ToulonPlus in 2005).

Apart from launching new editions in Metz, Nancy and Toulon, Metro France will also increase circulation in Paris, Nice and Toulouse.

On 21 September, Metro launched in Metz and Nancy with 20,000 copies. Today, Metro is also available in Toulon with 10,000 copies.

In Nice and Toulouse circulation is increased, while 60,000 more copies will be distributed in Paris from 1 October on. The copies will be distributed by a combination of hand promoters and racks in 50 new key street distribution points, over 40 train stations and 200 large company buildings in Greater Paris. In Paris a team of five local reporters and columnists work for the edition.

The aim is to differentiate Metro from other players by becoming the largest free newspaper in Paris and acquiring the best national coverage of free newspapers in France.