Media Life Magazine gets it wrong again

COMMENTARY: Media Life Magazine. Ever heard of them? We didn't a year or so ago, and we read a lot of Web sites, magazines and newspapers. Whatever Media Life Magazine is, its stories are distributed online, and are quoted by many, but often contain glaring factual inaccuracies. You can read our rant about their ridiculous claim that Metro International invented the free daily in 1995. A bunch of other free dailies were operating in 1995 when Metro got the idea to do one of their own. Now Media Life writer Lisa Snedeker claims:

Free dailies are not new. The Metro chain first launched in this country in 2001, in Philadelphia, and it has since spread to other cities.

Of course she doesn't care that free dailies started here in the 1940s in California, and a second round started in Colorado in the 1970s, and more were launched in the 1980s and 1990s. No Metro was first, she thinks. Nothing against Metro, but those guys have never made a dime in America. Yet many other U.S. free dailies -- ones that existed long before Metro -- have been successful both in terms of P/L and journalism. When you see glaring errors like this, you wonder how many other facts in such an article are wrong. Here's her article.