Newspaper Innovation

Reuters reported today that a slight majority of newspapers editors think that newspapers will be free in the future because that’s the only way to compete with the internet. The report was conducted by Zogby International for the World Editors Forum and Reuters.

Repondents are more leaning to free than a year ago while Europeans are the moste careful: “56 percent of respondents believed that the majority of news, be it via print or online, would be free in the future. That was up from 48 percent who answered yes a year ago. Those leaning towards the free model mostly came from ‘emerging’ newspaper markets in areas such as South America, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Asia where 61 percent of respondents believed news would be free. Respondents in Western Europe were less likely to believe in news becoming free, with 48 percent of news executives thinking it likely, while North American editors were on par with the average.”

By the way, the heading “Newspapers likely to be free in the future” is Reuters, not mine.

In April 2008, there are 234 free dailies published in 58 countries
worldwide. Total circulation is almost 45 million.

In the Newsletter:
- editorial on profitability
- launches in Thailand, the Netherlands, Romania, USA & Ukraine
- closures & plans in the USA
- audit quarrels in Austria and Canada
- circulation: France, Italy, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain
- readership: Spain, Portugal, Poland
- publishers: Tamedia, Quebecor, Murdoch, Metro, PCM, Edipresse, Adelson
- update: Macedonia & Colombia
- research: Korea, NewspaperNext, advertising

Sparked off by the Q1 2008 loss of Metro International, the closure of BostonNow, and substantial losses of Murdoch’s thelondonpaper in its first year, the topic of free newspapers being not profitable has been much discussed lately.

Last week it was on Philip Stone’s Follow the Media website (see previous), in the Wall Street Journal and on MediaLife. The last article was heavily criticized by free-daily.com for being inaccurate.

This Wednesday Jyllands Posten will have an article on the Danish situation. In Follow the Media I was quoted for the rough estimate of 70% of the free dailies not making profits (I indeed said that). (A ‘rough estimate’ because most publishers are either privately owned or don’t break out results for separate titles.)

Many other media copied these stories, mostly ending with the catch phrase that free apparently doesn’t equal profitable. Some media almost seemed to be gloating over it. The question of course, is whether this really means that the ‘free daily’-model has no future. (more…)

On the Resources page, a link to a article in the Journal of Media Management on free and paid newspapers in Korea: “What to Read in the Morning? A Niche Analysis of Free Daily Papers and Paid Papers in Korea” by Keunyeong Yi and Yoontaek Sung.

They argue on the basis of analyzing readership and circulation data, on a survey, that free dailies have cannibalized on paid and sports papers, and could be even more harmful to the latter category.

The month of March is the best month ever for this website. For the first time it had more than 50,000 visits. One year ago the visits were still below 30,000 a month. Also for the first time last month more than 2000 visits a day were recorded, on March 11. Most visitors come from the US, after that the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, the UK and Italy follow.

In the 32nd FDN newsletter:

• New Stats & Graphs page on the website
• Circulation of free dailies 43.5 million, 228 titles in 55 countries
• Launches in Turkey, Israel, US & Italy
• Plans for Switzerland, Baltimore & France
• Circulation: Switzerland, Holland, UK, Spain, Austria, Ireland, Hungary
• Readership: France, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Romania
• Publishers: WAZ, ImpreMedia, Ringier, Schibsted
• More news on titles in Scotland, Austria, USA, Canada, Belgium, Germany

It can be downloaded from the newsletter page.

In 1995 there was only one free newspaper published in South America: MetroNews in Sao Paolo (Brazil). In 2000 the number increased to 6, three years ago 10 titles were published. In 2008 there were 16 titles in 6 countries.

In Middle America there are also free dailies in Mexico (since 2000) and the Dominican Republic (since 2001). In total 5 titles are published in both countries.

Thanks to GoogleDocs we can introduce some dynamic statistics and graphics on the new Stats & Graphs page.

The number of titles of free dailies in Asia increased from 3 in 2000 when free dailies were introduced to 30 in 2008. Korea, Israel and Hong Kong have the highest number of free dailies.

Swiss readership auditing organization WMEF published in the last (December 2007) Report an article on readership patterns of different age groups. The article by Edi Kradolfer is on page 9 to 11. It’s in German (and also in French), but graph 2 on page 10 is clear enough.

Readership of paid papers by older age groups (45 years and above) has hardly changed between 2001 and 2007. But the younger groups read less paid newspapers, particularly after 2003. The drop, however, was less than 10%. (more…)

Free daily newspaper are published in 19 US states in 2008. In 1995 five states had free dailies, in 2000 six and in 2005 fifteen.

The number of titles increased from 12 in 1995 to almost 50 in 2008. Three titles (Metro, Examiner and HOY) have different editions in different states.

California, Colorado and New Hampshire have the highest number of titles.

The number of titles of free dailies newspapers in Europe has risen from 2 in 1995 to 125 in 2008. Thanks to GoogleDocs we can show that in this interactive graph (a so-called heat map gadget).

Spain is leading the pack when it comes to the number of free dailies: 23 different titles in 2008. In 2005 Spain was also leading.

In 2000 Germany (!) was the country with the highest number of free dailies in Europe: afternoon paper 15 Uhr Aktuell in Munich, Berlin and Hamburg. In Cologne three different titles were published. 15 Uhr, however, closed down the same year while the three other titles closed down in 2001.

Media economics expert Robert Picard published an interesting and provocative post on his blog The Media Business. In the article The Internet, mobile media, and youth are not to blame he discusses the growing (and groundless) fear among traditional media organizations for contemporary and future developments in the media field that are leading to increased competition in a - up until recently - fairly stable industry.

Picard: “Trade publications and industry association meetings are filled with news of diminished budgets, reorganizations, consolidations, and layoffs. People say traditional media are declining and will soon disappear.” (more…)

Pan-European free daily Metro is one of the best-known European media brands according to a 2007 Synovate/EMS study. In terms of reach in the group of influential Europeans, Metro is the best-known print medium, being read by 2.4 million of the target group on any given weekday. 20 Minutes reaches 967,000 readers in the target group, Financial Times 581,000.

The monthly National Geographic reaches 2.2 million, weekly Time 1 million influentials. Three TV channels, Eurosport, MTV and Arte, have a higher reach: 4.1 million, 3.2 million and 2.6 million people in the target group.

Research was done in 16 Western European countries, the Metro-brand including the Metro International papers, Associated Newspapers UK and Irish operations and the Belgian Metro as well.

Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail will publish a new book, FREE, 2009. A taste of FREE can be read at Wired.

In the first 2008 FDN Newsletter:

• The Metro US Sale
• Launches in Israel, Canada and India
• Closures: Israel, Austria and the Philippines
• Circulation: UK, Czech Republic, the Netherlands
• Readership: Sweden, Israel, Portugal
• Titles & Publishers: Metro, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Denmark, Canada, Poland, South Africa, Italy, Ukraine, USA
• Research: Politics in free dailies, immigrant media use, experiencing paid and free newspapers, free daily brands, US outlook for 2008

Metro Ireland is hosting Dublin’s first global free newspaper seminar which will bring together the leading players from the world of free newspaper publishing.

The seminar is taking place in The Morrison Hotel, on Wednesday 30th January, 7.45am to 9.45am. Speakers include Steve Auckland (Managing Director, Metro UK), Per Mikael Jensen (CEO, Metro International), and Piet Bakker (Associate Professor, University of Amsterdam).

Information on reservation the Metro website.

Traditional newspapers always have been regarded as being important for society. Most of all because they play a role in politics: offer news and opinions so readers can participate in discussions about politics. Whether free newspapers can play the same role is not clear. They often don’t offer editorials, try to be as neutral as possible, have a smaller amount of news and don’t publish too much political background and investigative news.

Professor Stig Hjarvard from the Copenhagen University asked readers how they evaluated their paid and free newspapers in this respect: do they really see free dailies as more neutral or do do recognize political standpoints in these papers as well? And how are voters for different parties distributed over different newspapers in Denmark. (more…)

The Association for the Understanding of the Immigrant Population released a study about media consumption of Madrid’s immigrants. Media use of almost 2,000 immigrants from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia was researched. Madrid’s total immigrant population is around 630,000.

“The study was conducted through personal interviews during September/October of 2007, and found that general market free papers achieved the highest penetration among the immigrant community, with 51.2 percent of respondents claiming to read them regularly. Weekly immigrant-focused publications garnered the next highest percentage of readers at 46.7% General Market paid circulation papers took third place, capturing 22% of Madrid’s immigrant population, while monthly immigrant focused publications came in last, with just 17.8% of the overall immigrant readership.” (Portada)

Newspapers are after radio the most valued medium by Dutch media users, but when paid and free newspapers are not taken together, paid newspapers are the most valued while free newspapers are much less liked.

Dutch newspaper marketing organization Cebuco published already in November a report on different experiences of free and paid newspapers in the Netherlands. Background is that (paid) newspapers might see circulation and readership go down but that they are still very much valued by their readers. (more…)