Thursday, November 08, 2007

Report: Paid paper stole free Boston papers

Boston Magazine reports that delivery drivers for the Boston Herald are stealing copies of that city's two free dailies, BostonNow and Metro Boston. Reporter M. Elizabeth Roman said she witnessed thefts at four locations. "As the presence of free daily and weekly papers here increases, hardball tactics like this seem inevitable," Roman writes. "Readership studies show that free papers do a better job than their pay peers of attracting new readers. For the Herald, which relies on single-copy sales for 77 percent of its weekday circulation, that makes the freebies serious competition." The illustration is by Marcos Chin from Boston Magazine.