Quick, American Journal battle in Dallas

COMMENTARY
Had a chance to visit Dallas and see both free dailies in action. They're on every street corner downtown, but are hard to find in the suburbs. When you get a chance to examine each of them, Quick is the winner. It has tighter stories, better graphics and a neat local buzz column. The Journal seems to locked in the 1970s, with long, ponderous stories. The real battle, however, is distribution. Who can get papers into the hands of all of those high-income workers in the Dallas skyscrapers? Quick seems to have the advantage there, too. You can't just stack a bunch of papers in the downstairs lobby and hope everyone takes one. You've got to go to each floor and hand them out. But, with post 9/11 security, how do you do that? We suspect that a Quick distribution person is inserting cards in their papers asking people in those buildings to request that Quick be delivered to their floor. OK, "we suspect" is silly in this context. We saw the card and talked to the distributor. It's a neat trick. Kudos to Quick.

Quick is quicker than the competition

They're fast on the draw in Dallas. The Dallas Morning News isn't going to get stampeded by a herd from a ... oh, help me, I've run out of cowboy puns ... rival newspaper company. Anyway, when the folks at Belo, the DMN's owner, heard that American Consolidated Media was going to launch a free dailiy called A.M. Journal Express. (Why the word "Dallas" isn't in the title, we don't know!) Anyway, the Journal Express plans to launch in two days. What a battle this is going to be! Our guess is that Dallas, where most people commute to their jobs in cars, will be a tough nut to crack for any free daily. You can't hand them out at subway stations like they do in Europe.

NY Times profiles amNewYork's Pergament

If you missed it, pick up today's NY Times or follow this link for a profile of Russel Pergament, who has emerged as a giant in the free daily industry. He built a chain of successful Boston suburban weeklies, then started Boston Metro and now is the driving force behind amNew York. How did he get his latest job? Like a true salesman, he did it with a cold call to the Tribune Co. And the article confirmed a rumor we heard a month ago — he's a shareholder in amNew York. He got Tribune to give him a piece of the action.

New York gets first free daily

We're not sure why it took so long, but we can report today that New York now has its first free daily — amNewYork (all one word with "am" lower case with no periods or spaces). This paper comes decades after America's first free dailies and months or years after commuter free dailies in Philadelphia, Boston and Toronto.

With an initial circulation of 150,000 copies, hawkers will distribute amNewYork at subway stations and on the streets. It will provide a free alternative to the paid NY Post and NY Daily News.

The new paper is a branch of Newsday on Long Island, which started a New York City edition in 1985. While it was praised for its editorial quality, which was regarded as a notch above the Daily News and Post, it lost money. New York Newsday closed in 1995. Newsday and amNew York are owned by the Tribune Co., which also has an independent TV station in New York (WPIX 11). It is rumored that amNew York has some employees who hold small shares of the new paper, but Free-Daily wasn't able to confirm that report.

The publisher of amNew York is Russel Pergament, who quit the same position at Boston Metro in June. Pergament was the driving force behind that edition of Metro and is considered to be an excellent salesman.

Express lampooned by weekly competitor

The American Press Institute has posted this article on the launch yesterday of the Washington Post's free commuter daily "Express." The picture is of Eric LaPrince, 14, who is hawking copies of the free daily from 6 to 10 a.m. daily. The alt-weekly City Paper, fearful of success by the Express, put out a parody edition titled "Expresso" with the headline "For those who will not read, we salute you!"

"It's tailored to those who don't read which is, I think, the audience the Post is trying to get," said Brooke Linville, a City Paper intern. "It was really funny because the people who [the Express] was geared towards still weren't grabbing the paper. So it was still the older people who had the Washington Post in their hands, were reading it as well."

Express lampooned by weekly competitor

The American Press Institute has posted this article on the launch yesterday of the Washington Post's free commuter daily "Express." The picture is of Eric LaPrince, 14, who is hawking copies of the free daily from 6 to 10 a.m. daily. The alt-weekly City Paper, fearful of success by the Express, put out a parody edition titled "Expresso" with the headline "For those who will not read, we salute you!"

"It's tailored to those who don't read which is, I think, the audience the Post is trying to get," said Brooke Linville, a City Paper intern. "It was really funny because the people who [the Express] was geared towards still weren't grabbing the paper. So it was still the older people who had the Washington Post in their hands, were reading it as well."

Washington Post to launch free daily

The Washington Post Company, obviously worried that Metro International will start an edition in its backyard, today (August 4) launched a free commuter daily called "Express" with a circulation of 125,000. It will be published Monday through Friday and distributed near commuter train stations, on college campuses and in locations with heavy daytime sidewalk traffic. According to the Post:

"A typical edition of Express will be 20 to 24 pages -- designed to be read in 15 to 20 minutes, during the morning commute or breaks in the workday. The publication will feature short news summaries for a broad range of recent developments, from major national and international stories to business and market highlights, and local news and entertainment coverage. Content will be drawn from a variety of news sources and services."

Sounds like the Metro formula to us.

Washington Post to start free daily

The Washington Post announced today that it is entering the free daily business. It's entry is titled "Express" and it will appear later this summer (date to be announced) at train stations, college campuses and downtown locations with heavy traffic. The goal is two fold -- stop other free dailies from entering the market and capture the time and attention of younger readers who don't pick up the paid broadsheet post. Here's a press release.

Christopher Ma, a Post Company vice president and former executive editor of washingtonpost.com, will be the new paper's publisher; the general manager will be Arnold Applebaum, formerly director of recruitment advertising at The Post. Express will be edited by Daniel Caccavaro, formerly editor-in-chief of Boston Metro, a free commuter newspaper launched in Boston in 2001.

Examiner publsher called "corporate vulture"

You don't want to give stories in "alt-weeklies" too much credence. I remember how an alt-weekly in Denver, "Westword," seemed to twist every quote it got in order to punish those it disliked. So, with that caveat, I link to a story in the OC Weekly by Nathan Callahan about Phil Anschutz, who bought the San Francisco Examiner, a free daily. This blog is about free dailies. And I have been trying to figure out why Anschutz, a billionaire with fortunes in the railroad, telephone and oil industries, wanted to buy a second-rate paper in San Francisco. Frankly, it fascinates me. Here's a link to the entire article and here are a few paragraphs I found eye-opening:

An evangelical Presbyterian, Anschutz got his start using his Daddy’s Kansas-based oil-and-gas business as a pipeline to riches in railroads and later as a conduit to profits in the telecommunications industry. That’s where the devoutly postured Anschutz made Enron-style headlines as the owner of Qwest Communications. ...

If the Anschutz Foundation is any indication, your Star of Hope donation could go to the spectacularly anti-gay Colorado for Family Values (CFV). This Anschutz-funded group’s goal is to halt "the militant gay agenda." Your donation could help spread the CFV doctrine that "pedophilia is a basic part of the homosexual lifestyle" or that "homosexuals freely admit among themselves the importance of child abuse."

Another beneficiary of the Anschutz Foundation, the Institute for American Values, campaigns against single parenting; still another, Enough is Enough, promotes Internet censorship. ...

Anschutz is no newcomer to nurturing ecclesiastic loonies.

In 1988, he created the Marian Pfister Anschutz Award in honor of his mother. One of the first recipients was James Dobson, author, radio commentator and founder of Focus on the Family. Described by one reporter as a "professional Christian," Dobson is best known for his work on President Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Pornography. There, Dobson testified that his family was chased around town by a black Porsche with Satan behind the wheel—presumably to reward Dobson for working for Reagan.

I’m not kidding you. Anschutz actually gave an award named after his mother to this pious freak. There’s more. In his book Children at Risk, Dobson writes that pornography can lead to "sex between women and bulls, stallions or boars" and eventually to serial killings. According to Dobson, Ted Bundy’s vicious sex-murder spree was inspired by "the accidental discovery of girlie magazines at a roadside dump."

Why is Anschutz in the newspaper business? My fear is that he will produce such a despicable product that free dailies will forever be discredited by his proclivities.

Major California daily goes free

The San Francisco Examiner, once the mighty flagship of the Hearst newspaper chain, is going through hard times after it was sold by Hearst when the company bought the city's other paper, the Chronicle. Yesterday the Examiner laid off most of its editorial staff Friday and announced it would become a free daily paper available only in city news racks and retail stores, starting Monday. The Examiner will go from a broadsheet to tabloid. The rival Chron reports that 40 staff members in the Examiner circulation department and newsroom were let go, leaving just two reporters, three editors and two columnists. The newspaper will now share more content with the Independent, which is owned by the same family as the Examiner.

Commentary: It seems the Examiner has become a free daily as a last resort in order to survive. If the Examiner fails, readers and advertisers will say, "See, free dailies don't work." The truth may be that the Examiner is circling the drain because of its own problems. The current owners have injected political bias into its news columns and readers have rejected the paper. Nothing can help it now, not even dramatically cutting its costs. This is a black eye for the rest of the free daily industry, which is growing and successful. The Examiner is an albatross to other free dailies.