Newspaper Innovation

Publimetro Chile, subsidiary of Metro International SA, purchased 35% of SUBTV, as well as an option to acquire the remaining 65% in the future.

SUBTV delivers news, entertainment and information to subway commuters through television screens in stations and in train carriages in the capital Santiago. SUBTV was established 6 years ago, has 25 employees and reported a profit in 2007.

Robert Patterson, Executive Vice President of Metro International, stated: ‘there are significant synergies between Publimetro’s publishing business and SUBTV’s television business, since they are both targeting the same audience. In addition, the innovative transport system introduced in Santiago - Chile in early 2007 has doubled the number of passenger trips to 2.4 million per day and this has materially increased the attractiveness of SUBTV as an advertising medium’. (Metro press release)

Swiss leading free newspaper 20 Minuten distributed a free discount magazine today in the Zurich area. In the ’20’s best’ guide, readers can find offers for 26 products that can be obtained at a discount.

The circulation is 350,000 - but readers who cannot find a copy can download it from the special website an print the coupons. The guide can also be read as an e-paper. (Persoenlich)

After Murdoch’s News Corp. (New York Post, Wall Street Journal, local TV) and Mortimer Zuckerman (New York Daily News) (see previous), also Long Island firm Cablevision will be bidding for NY newspaper Newsday. In this sale free daily amNewYork is included.

Cablevision, owned by the Dolan family, is offering $650m - $70m more than both other bidders - for the Tribune owned company, although the sale would also include some estate and other assets. Cablevision operates cable, telecommunications and Internet businesses on Long Island, including cable and online news service News 12. (Chicago Tribune)

While Newsday is losing money, which all bidders see reduced because of synergy effects with their own operations, amNewYork is making a profit.

Austrian newspaper Der Standard reported already in March that the free/paid paper Österreich asked Norwegian publisher Schibsted to participate in the newspaper. Sverre Munck, responsible for the free dailies, declined the offer.

Österreich is now available in five different editions. Vienna and Oberösterreich (Linz, Wels, Steyr) were already available from the start. Now also editions for NiederOstereich (St. Pölten) and Salzburg are distributed. For the Salzburg area it’s the first free daily. A fifth edition is just called ‘regional’.

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

Mark Fletcher covered the free Hong Kong daily The Standard no less than three times this week on his the Australian Newsagency blog. He was not only impressed with the content but also with his distribution of the paper.

In his last entry Mark included a copy of a full page ad of the paper, celebrating its victory in readership and circulation over rival The South China Morning Post. Read the rest of this entry »

The bid of Rupert Murdoch’s News International for Newsday (including free daily amNewYork) from the Tribune Company is matched by Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News.

Although the bid is also $580m, Zuckerman’s offer is expected to lead to less public resistance. A Murdoch takeover would also lead to more problems with antitrust legislation because of combined print/TV ownership. (ChainLinks)

All four Spanish national free dailies have more readers in the first report of 2008 (April 2007 - March 2008) than in previous periods. Most paid papers, however, also had more readers in the latest audit.

20 Minutos is still the best read paper in Spain with 2,685,000 readers (+ 7% compared to the previous audit). Paid sports paper Marca is second with 2,550,000 readers. Also Marca gained readers. Read the rest of this entry »

The March circulation data from Spain (by Publicitas and PRnoticias) revealed that free dailies still lead in circulation. El País is the paid paper with the highest circulation (460,000 daily copies). All four free national papers circulate more than that.

In March Qué! leads with 1,049,000 copies before ADN with 1,022,000. Best-read paper 20 Minutos distributes 980,000 copies while the circulation of Metro is 853,000. The growth in free circulation in Spain is gone, however. Indicating a focus more on readership and cutting costs.

Two of the bloggers I follow on a daily basis are in Hong Kong today. Guardian’s Roy Greenslade on his way to Australia and Australian Mark Fletcher visiting a Hong Kong gift fair.

Fletcher’s blog Australian Newsagency Blog reported on the good quality of Hong Kong’s latest addition to the free newspaper market, the formerly paid Standard. According to Flecher, the quality is so good that “I wouldn’t like to see a free newspaper like this in Australia.”

Greenslade is commenting on the elderly people that make a living by gathering discarded papers on the street. The price of old paper is high enough to make some money of it. Advertisers should be less pleased of course because some papers end up at the recycling center without ever being opened.

Via the Publicitas newsletter I got the latest US circulation data on the top 10 paid dailies. Not a very happy sight, with 8 out of 10 losing circulation in 2007/2008. Only the Wall Street Journal and USA Today saw their circulation increase. The list, however, also showed that the 10 most circulated dailies are not all paid dailies.

Wall Street Journal and USA Today are leading, followed by The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Free daily The Examiner is the 5th although with roughly the same circulation as the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and the The Washington Post. Metro is the 9th paper in circulation, followed by the Chicago Tribune.

A must-read for newspaper executives and other interested in newspaper innovation is the NewspaperNext 2.0 report on newspaper innovation by the American Press Institute.

Many case studies on successful innovations are presented. Some of them free weeklies or even dailies like the Beachcomber in Portsmouth (N.J.), a beach season free daily.

The seasonal paper was published last year by paid daily Portsmouth Herald. The website is still online - waiting for next summer season.

De Pers confirmed yesterday afternoon that publisher Cornelis van den Berg was stepping down (see previous). He will stay on as a ‘special advisor’ to the paper.

It is, however, unlikely, that Van den Berg only leaves because of the free business paper - although this little experiment may have helped him on the way out. Only in the afternoon of the first day of the new paper, it was announced that it was a two-days experiment. Perhaps it was not indented as a test-run. If owner Marcel Boekhoorn really did not know about the plan, as was suggested in some media, he could have been responsible for turning the launch into a two-days test.

The business paper may have pushed the publisher over the edge, but the financial performance of De Pers might be a better reason. De Pers lost €20m in 2007. For 2008 a loss of €10m s expected while in 2009 De Pers will loose another €5m. Cornelis van den Berg revealed these data in a candid interview in Belgian daily De Morgen on March 28. Read the rest of this entry »

According to unconfirmed rumors, Cornelis van den Berg, the driving force behind free daily De Pers in the Netherlands, will step down shortly. The reason might be the financial paper that was launched last week as a test. Within the company not everybody was pleased (or informed) of this plan.

Publisher Van den Berg wrote the business plan and found a private investor, Marcel Boekhoorn, for the newspaper that launched in January 2007. (DAG, via MediaNederland)

Swiss publisher Tamedia has seen its revenue rise in 2007, mainly thanks to its newspaper business. The newspaper division had a total revenue of CHf 348m (€440m), a rise of 16%.

Tamedia publishes paid papers Tages Anzeiger (Zurich) and Berner Zeitung. Free daily 20 Minuten (20 Minutes in the French speaking part of Switzerland) was responsible for an important part of the revenues.

In 2007 Tamedia launched free dailies News in Switzerland and L’Essentiel in Luxembourg. (Persoenlich)

Canadian publisher Quebecor (Journal de Québec) issued a press release on the lock-out at the newspaper that started more than a year ago (see previous post). According to Quebecor, circulation, readership and advertising income are declining which makes it necessary to take measures at the Journal de Québec.

Employees at Journal de Québec were paid generously according to the publisher. A yearly income between Can$ 83,000 and 100,000 was normal, employees at the Toronto Sun got at least $12,000 less. Read the rest of this entry »

Dutch free daily Spits merged their website in the beginning of April with NieuwNieuws. This last website is owned by News Media, a 40% subsidiary of Telegraaf Media Group, owner of Spits and publisher of De Telegraaf, the best-read newspaper in the Netherlands.

News Media is mostly know for ’shock blog’ GeenStijl, a website with a rather unorthodox way of approaching the news. Comments and news are often mixed up, while the level of abuse in the users’ comments is quite high. GeenStijl is notorious for its campaigns on certain issues, personal attacks included.

NieuwNieuws was always more news-oriented although it shared many of its users with GeenStijl.

The merger was meant to result in increased traffic on the new combined Spits / NieuwNieuws website SpitsNieuws. The website indeed succeeded in much more visitors than before.

The tone of voice in the comments is still quite close to the old NieuwNieuws. It’s often suggested that people should be hung, shot, bombed, cut in pieces, thrown off from high building etc. Most of the abuse, however, is directed at other users. Success (page views) apparently comes at a price.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

The new free Dutch business paper De Financiële Pers by free daily De Pers and business platform IEX.nl was a two-days test run only. An editorial in the 25 April edition made this clear.

When the audience reactions are good and advertisers are also positive it will be launched ‘for real’ later. The circulation was 25,000. The paper was distributed in business centers in the Netherlands.

According to the editorial De Pers ‘can’t wait’ to start with the financial paper, that will compete with paid Financieele Dagblad. The new title already a has a domain www.definancielepers.nl although you’ll end up at the website of De Pers.

The longest lock-out in Canadian newspaper history made free MédiaMatinQuébec celebrate its first birthday today. The labor conflict at Journal de Québec (Quebecor) started 22 April 2007.

From  24 April 2007, locked-out employees started their own free daily, MédiaMatinQuébec, distributed in 40,000 copies five days a week. Read the rest of this entry »