Newspaper Innovation

The free daily ”Metro” (Agora, Poland) won an INMA (International Newsmedia Marketing Association) award for their ”No face day” project.

The ”No face day” street event (March 2, 2011) was part of the online social campaign by Symantec, Asus and Vobis to gain publicity to the problem of cyber crimes and the risks of sharing personal data via internet.

Metro readers got their copy of the newspaper from masked distributors whose strange, disturbing, faceless apparition symbolized loss of identity in cyber space. The event was further supported by Metro’s wrap-around informative cover with a symbolic picture of a young man with his face torn off the paper.

The 77th edition of INMA Awards garnered 540 entries from 141 marketing newsmedia companies in 34 countries. More about the competition and this year’s winners.

Danish free daily 24timer (owned by Metro International) introduced a new design yesterday.

The design is much more ‘basic’ and uses a slightly different color blue than the previous design (below).

To support a recruitement campaign for the Dutch army, more than 150 uniformed soldiers in 21 major cities assisted the regular distributors of free daily Spits (Telegraaf Media Group) with distributing the newspaper today.

According to Spits editior-in-chief Jan-Jaap de Kloet, the action, which was initiatied by the Dutch ministry of Defence, generated a lot of free publicity on websites, tv and radio.

National tv-news Nos-journaal (radio and  tv), Pownews and commercial news program Hart van Nederland covered the campaign.

The Ministry of Defense already had a longer relation with the free newspaper, as their target groups are very much the same.

The free newspaper contained an eight-page section (left) sponsored by the Ministry of Defense. Job opportunities, schooling, options for foreign missions were covered in interviews and editorial contributions.

I spoke to several army staff members this morning in Utrecht who doubled as newspaper distributors.

All of them were exited to do the job, also because it was “something completely different” compared to their usual work.

After the news broke of the closing of Dutch free newspaper De Pers, the paper published next day an ad on the front page aksing for a new owner/publisher.

Being very honest, the ad read that the business model was “problematic but challenging”.

What happened actually was not that a new owner reacted, but that some readers joined forces and launched the website “red De Pers (”Save De Pers”). Goal was to have 50,000 subscribers to save the paper. The group also opened a Facebook page where people can ‘like’ the action.

The paper itself is now endorsing the action and again devoted the frontpage to saving the paper.

UK free daily Metro will also publish on weekends during the London Olympics.

Metro will distribute 325,000 copies in London on Saturday and Sunday morning during the five weeks of the Olympic and Paralympic games in July and August.

The tablet editions will be published twice daily, seven days a week. (MediaWeek)

Today, Metro’s world-wide guest editor is fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. Inside all Metro’s there are stories by and inspired by him.

All Metro’s can be downloaden from the ReadMetro website.

Below the covers of Brazil, France, Guatelmala, Hong Kong, Denmark, Ecuador, Holland, Hungary, Russia, Sweden, USA and Portugal (Click to enlarge).

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.

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)