Random notes & observations

AD LEAD: Starbucks is inserting loyalty cards in both the Chicago Tribune and its free daily counterpart, RedEye, Editor & Publisher reports. If Starbucks is willing to divide its print budget between a free and paid paper, maybe they'll spend money with other free dailies. ...

VOLATILE CIRCULATION: Circulation has been going up and down like a yo-yo at Boston Metro — from 187,000 to 135,000 to 170,000, all in a few months, the Boston alt-weekly The Phoenix reports. Boston Metro has other troubles. It lost publisher Stuart Layne in January, followed by editor Saul Williams a few weeks later. Metro International put the Boston paper and its counterparts in New York and Philadelphia on the block, but so far no takers. All of this has got to be helpful for beantown's new free daily, BostonNow, headed by Russel Pergament. ...

EDITOR SUES: Richard Dooley, who was acting city editor of the Halifax Daily News, is suing the owners of the paper, who shut it down and started a free daily in its place in Feburary. Dooley claims that owner Transcontinental let him go in "an insensitive and unprofessional manner" and "without just cause and without any notice," the competing Halifax Chronicle Herald reports. The new paper, Halifax Metro, is owned by Transcontinental, Torstar Corp. (Toronto Star) and Metro International.