free-daily.com

10 ways to improve your distribution

2010-07-09T15:05:00.000-07:00

A reader of this blog asked me if I had any ideas on how to improve his circulation. I told him to stop smoking and take a brisk walk every morning.

As for the delivery of newspapers, I wish I had a cute one-liner. Transportation and delivery logistics are one of the most difficult challenges facing any free daily newspaper. No matter how strong your news coverage is, no matter how aggressive your ad reps are, you can't succeed unless you deliver the product to readers. And, sad to say, ads in online editions just don't bring in the dollars you can get through print advertising.

The following is my attempt to bring together the best ideas I've heard regarding distribution. Very few of them are original, but I'm not sure if those who offered their ideas wanted their names associated with them or not, so I won't attribute my sources. Here goes.

1. For free papers, news racks are essential.

2. Avoid throwing a bundle of papers at the front door of a restaurant or retailer who is supposed to display your papers.

3. If possible, hire a daytime delivery person or persons to walk a downtown district.

4. Know your news rack ordinances.

5. City officials don't like complaints from residents or businesses

6. In many cities, competing newspapers work together to install modular racks for several papers.

7. Avoid inserts.

8. Check on delivery people.

9. Eliminate stops where only one or two papers are delivered.

10. Aim to complete deliveries by automobile before rush hour.

If you have other ideas on how to improve delivery, please e-mail me at free-daily@hotmail.com.

Lauletta returns to Metro as circulation director

2010-07-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

While we're on the subject of circulation ... Joseph Lauletta has returned to Metro as U.S. circulation director. He was Metro’s circulation director from 2000-05 in Philadelphia and helped launch editions in Toronto, Montreal, Boston and New York for Pelle Tornberg, the former Metro International CEO who now heads the Metro U.S. editions. After 2005, Lauletta went on to be Knight Ridder’s national distribution manager for free products and most recently was the circulation director for the Palo Alto (California) Daily News.

Publisher bungles editor's resignation

2010-07-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

Nobody likes getting scooped. But it's even worse when the competition gets the scoop out of your own newsroom.

That's apparently what happened at the free circulation San Francisco Examiner when executive editor James Pimentel resigned on June 18.

For whatever reason, Publisher John Wilcox didn't run a story saying Pimentel was leaving the paper. Pimentel had been the paper's top editor for four years and had worked at the Examiner since 2001.

Four days later, an online newspaper, SF Appeal, reported that Pimentel had departed the paper and that Wilcox had held a staff meeting to tell employees about it.

The SF Appeal story left the impression that Pimentel was shown the door.

The next day, probably in response to the SF Appeal's report, the Examiner ran a story saying that Pimentel had resigned as editor but will remain with the Examiner's parent company, Clarity Media Group, to work on a redesign of its newspaper websites.

It's a shame Wilcox couldn't have printed a story about Pimentel's resignation/promotion earlier, instead of being scooped by an online newspaper that appears to have been incorrect in some of its reporting. If the resignation/promotion claim is true, then Wilcox botched the announcement, needlessly damaging Pimentel's reputation.

Metro New York launches zoned edition

2010-06-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

Metro New York, which reports a daily circulation of 314,113, has launched a 40,000-circulation edition on Thursdays for the borough of Queens. The new edition allows Metro to sell ads at a lower rate in just that area of New York City.

“Advertisers want to target their local market in the most efficient way," says Ed Abrams, Executive Sales Director, Metro New York. “This Queen’s zoned edition is a chance to get [the advertiser’s] sales message in front of your most-likely customers: those who live or work near your business.”

The zoned edition is one of several innovations by the U.S. Metro papers after they were taken over last year by former Metro International chief executive Pelle Tornberg. The three Metros -- New York, Boston and Philadelphia -- have undergone successful redesigns. The amount of advertising has improved, and the ads are mostly from major national and regional accounts. Zoning will allow Metro to go after smaller advertisers that haven't been able to afford newspaper ads.

Toronto paper tells its story with video

2010-04-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

Everybody in the free daily newspaper industry should watch the five-minute promotional video the new Toronto evening paper "t.o.night" has created. Not only is the video an effective sales tool for t.o.night, it also makes case for why free dailies are popular with readers.

Toronto t.o.night started last September with newsboys and girls dressed in poorboy caps and white oxford shirts yelling "Extra! Extra!" as they handed out copies to people on the streets. As the video notes, the paper is owned by three local residents and therefore has a more independent view than chain papers. The video also shows how t.o.night fills a need in Toronto -- the city has six morning papers, but t.o.night is alone during the evening commute, serving up stories that happened earlier in the day.

"Evening free dailies have proven successful globally, especially in similar Commonwealth countries (ex: Australia, United Kingdom) countering the argument that commuters catch up on all their news on the Internet at work," t.o.night says on its website. "An evening newspaper catches the consumer right before they make their plans and purchases for the evening -- not 8-10 hrs. before. T.o.night is the last opportunity advertisers have to reach consumers directly before they make their final decisions."

Editor out after offering cop favorable coverage

2010-04-02T17:43:00.000-07:00

The editor of the Aspen (Colorado) Daily News, who was caught on tape offering favorable coverage to a police officer in exchange for not charging him with drunken driving, has left his job by "mutual agreement," the rival Aspen Times reports.

Troy Hooper will be replaced by Carolyn Sackariason, who had previously worked at the Aspen Daily News and later co-founded the Santa Monica (California) Daily Press in 2001 with Daily News owner Dave Danforth. Since May 2007, Sackariason has been a reporter at the Aspen Times.

“I’m coming back to my roots,” Sackariason told the Aspen Daily News. “It’s where I started in this valley and where I plan to remain forever. I’m also getting back with my business partner who has also been my mentor.”

Sackariason succeeds Troy Hooper, who had been the editor of the Aspen Daily News since 2007. On Feb. 19, according to local newspaper reports, Hooper got a ride home from Aspen Police Officer Valerie McFarlane, who is a key prosecution witness in the Charlie Sheen domestic violence case. However, after the tape made by McFarlane's police car came to light, police fired her effective Feb. 26.

The Times quoted Aspen Police Chief Richard Pryor as saying there was an apparent conflict of interest at the time McFarlane encountered Hooper because the editor had written stories about her personnel problems at the police department.

On March 17, Aspen Daily News owner Danforth suspended Hooper, saying he was concerned for the reputation of his paper. Both the Aspen Times and Daily News are free dailies.

The Daily News polled readers on its website, asking if Hooper should have been suspended. With 503 votes cast, 47% said "Yes, and a harsher punishment should be imposed." Another 25% said, "Yes, it's an issue of integrity for the head of the paper."

Danforth's paper announced Hooper's departure on Thursday, saying the decision was by "mutual agreement," according to the Times. But Danforth left open the door that Hooper might return. "He's a very talented writer and a very talented editor,” Danforth said. “I very much look forward to when we might see Hooper's writing again in the Daily News.”

Hooper declined to comment on his departure to the Aspen Times, and would not say whether he was dismissed or resigned.

Looking for a job? Free dailies are hiring

2010-03-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

While the paid-newspaper industry has been endlessly laying off journalists, free dailies are hiring. Take a look at JournalismJobs.com. Six free dailies have job openings:

• Metro Boston is looking for a reporter. "This position is part our local news team, and will be part of a two-person reporting crew responsible for but not limited to covering the city of Boston in a way that will keep our readers informed, interested and intrigued. To further our efforts of reaching our core demographic -- 18-34 city-centric upwardly mobile men and women -- we must not only report the news, but find and package it in a way that makes it relevant to our readers. We produce a paper with our readers’ lifestyle in mind, and we are looking for a reporter who can do the same." In addition, "Metro offers a full benefits package (including medical, dental, 401K, paid vacation and more) along with a competitive base salary."

• The Telluride Daily Planet, a 5,000 circulation, five-day-a-week paper, is seeking a reporter who will "cover everything from the Telluride Bluegrass and Film festivals to $300 million bank fraud cases. This small town generates ample news and we need someone to help us sort through it to provide clear, accurate and insightful stories. This is by all means a blanket beat; you'll be asked to cover governments, sports, businesses and the ski area, not to mention anything else that comes along. We're a staff of three (yourself included), so you need to be comfortable working in every facet of small-town newspapering: copy editing, pulling wire off the AP, taking a photo, updating the Web site — it all comes down to you. We expect about two stories a day, with longer features for our Sunday papers. If you aren't a clean, self-reliant writer this isn't the post for you. Your work week is usually Tuesday-Saturday, and we go down to four days a week in the shoulder season (six weeks or so in both the spring and fall)."

• In Palo Alto, California, the town's most controversial paper, The Daily Post, is looking for a reporter. "Palo Alto never has a slow news day. Our challenge is covering all of the news that happens here." The ad includes a link to a New York Times story about the newspaper war in that town, where the publisher of the paper, Dave Price, is labeled a "contrarian."

• The Washington Examiner is looking for freelancers to cover real estate. "Some assignments may be only once or twice a year while some could develop into a regular weekly check. You can set your own hours as long as you meet deadlines and are able to report in a professional manner on the real estate, design and building communities." One word of caution, though: while the Examiner is big on the Internet, don't send the real estate editor links to your stories -- she wants clips of printed articles.

• The best job advertised is that of Entertainment Editor at The Washington Post's free daily, The Express. "The ideal candidate will have a solid working knowledge of pop culture and at least two years' experience in a news-gathering environment. He or she must demonstrate seasoned editorial judgment and a mastery of grammar, story-telling structure and AP style. Exceptional headline- and caption-writing skills are essential, as are basic skills in online publishing and page layout. A keen sense of humor is key."

Who could pass up a job where a sense of humor is key?

Aspen paper silent after editor let off of DUI charge

2010-03-12T16:24:00.000-08:00

In Aspen, Colorado — a city with two free daily newspapers — a police officer has been fired after she decided not to charge the editor of one of the papers with DUI following a conversation in which he offered her favorable coverage.

A 26-minute conversation between Aspen Daily News Editor Troy Hooper and Officer Valerie McFarlane was caught on a recording device in her police car, according to the rival Aspen Times.

On the tape of the Feb. 19 episode, Hooper discussed his coverage of the police department, including his reporting on McFarlane.

"You have also been fairly or unfairly put in a position. Not only am I willing to give you the opportunity to walk away from that, I'll give you a few of those opportunities, I really will."

He thanks McFarlane “for not f----ing with me as bad as you could have.”

He continues: “I want to give you a second chance just like you are giving me a second chance. Easily you could put me in jail and say ‘You know what, this guy's been drinking, blah, blah, blah' ... You could find a case. It wouldn't go very far. I have good attorneys, but ...”

The police department fired McFarlane on Feb. 26, but what about Hooper? So far the Aspen Daily News, owned by Dave Danforth, hasn't written a word about the story, though Hooper's name continues to appear on bylines and in the staff box of his own paper.

Meanwhile, The Aspen Times is not only running stories about the incident but also letters to the editor from readers.

In one letter, reader Denise Malcolm suggested the Daily News change its slogan of "If you don't want it printed, don't let it happen” to “If you don't want it printed, then strike a deal with one of our ethically challenged reporters or editors.”

Paper drops home delivery program

2010-03-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

The Santa Barbara Daily Sound, a free daily, is dropping its home delivery program "because of the current economic situation."

The Daily Sound, which started in 2006, began delivering to homes on April 29, 2008, a move that increased its circulation to an even 10,000.

"With significantly less demand than our free distribution, home delivery simply was too costly for us to continue."

New owner of Arizona paper cuts newsroom

2010-03-11T17:18:00.000-08:00

Veteran free-daily publisher Randy Miller wasted no time to cut costs after receiving a bankruptcy judge's approval to buy the East Valley Tribune in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa. The Phoenix Business Journal says Miller laid off roughly two dozen people in the Tribune's newsroom, leaving a staff of 14. Miller is the former publisher of the Colorado Daily in Boulder and currently owns the Telluride (Colorado) Daily Planet and Tucson's alt-weekly, The Explorer. He bought the Tribune from Freedom Communicationsn of Irvine, Calif. The deal reportedly included presses Freedom installed a couple of years ago for $4 million.

Palo Alto free daily war gets national play

2010-02-28T18:53:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has discovered there's a newspaper war in Palo Alto, California. But what the article downplays is that the battle is between two FREE daily newspapers.

In one corner is the Palo Alto Daily News, founded in 1995 by Dave Price (pictured in front of his news racks) and Jim Pavelich. They sold the paper and now its owned by MediaNews Group, a chain of 54 newspapers. In the other corner is the Daily Post, the paper Price and Pavelich started in 2008.

While downplaying the free angle, the Times article emphasizes the importance of local news coverage and an active editorial page in the success of a free daily paper. For the record, both the Post and Daily News maintain they're in the black.

When it comes to editorial page perspectives, the Times article quotes local officials as criticizing the Post. You can infer that they probably like the other papers in the community. Price is pleased to be criticized by government officials, saying his paper is tougher than its rivals.

It appears the two free dailies are serving up much more news than one monopoly local paper would.

The Times quotes a local high school journalism teacher, Esther Wojcicki, as saying: “I am really happy that we have all these papers ... I wish that kind of choice were available to more people in more areas.”

Court OK needed for sale of Arizona paper

2010-02-19T00:17:00.000-08:00

Randy Miller, former owner of the free Colorado Daily in Boulder, is inching closer to becoming the owner of the Pulizer Prize-winning East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Ariz., also a free daily.

Miller has been in talks with the Tribune's owner, Freedom Communications of Irvine, Calif., since late last year. Initially, he wanted to only buy the Tribune, but a new deal that is before the court handling Freedom's bankruptcy calls for him to also buy some of the weekly papers the Trib publishes.

Freedom is hoping for court approval in March. Court papers put the purchase price at $2.05 million.

Freedom said it is selling the Tribune at a loss, according to a report in the Tribune. The chain is losing about $20,000 a week on its suburban Phoenix papers. Miller has said he hopes to keep a "substantial number" of the Tribune's remaining 140 employees.

Miller, who sold the Colorado Daily in 2007, owns a 50,000-circulation free-distribution weekly in suburban north Tucson and the Telluride (Colo.) Daily Planet, a free daily.

The Tribune switched from paid to free in October 2007. But earlier this year owner Freedom Communications entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, which forced the company to either close or sell unprofitable operations. Freedom put the Tribune up for sale, and if no buyer was found by Dec. 31, the paper was to close.

The Tribune won a Pulitzer last year for a series that showed how a sheriff's emphasis on enforcing immigration laws reduced response times for other types of crime.

Metro is the first free daily? Not exactly

2010-02-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

We chuckled this morning when we read this news release in which Metro, the Swedish-based chain of free dailies, claimed it was "the first ever free daily newspaper."

Metro's claim must have come as surprise to the people working at free dailies in places like Boulder, Vail, Aspen, Conway, N.H., and Palo Alto, California.

While Metro says it was the first free daily (starting in 1995), The Colorado Daily in Boulder is actually the oldest continually operating free daily newspaper.

It had been a student newspaper at the University of Colorado until the spring of 1970 when the school's regents kicked it off campus for its editorials against the Vietnam War. To survive without assistance from the university, the Colorado Daily became a community newspaper. But unlike traditional community papers, the Colorado Daily remained free and stuck with its tabloid-size format.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Colorado today has more free dailies than any other state.

Before the Colorado Daily, there were two other free dailies -- the San Fernando Valley's Los Angeles Daily News and the Contra Costa Times, based in Walnut Creek, Calif., east of San Francisco. However, the Contra Costa paper switched to paid in the 1960s and L.A. Daily News began charging in 1982.

When Metro started in 1995, the Colorado Daily had been an independent free community daily for 15 years. The next free daily was the Aspen Daily News, which was started by Dave Danforth in 1979. For the first several years, Danforth's paper was printed on a single sheet of paper on a sheet-fed press. In 1984, Jim Pavelich began the Vail Daily. In 1988, the Aspen paper got a competitor when Dave Price converted the weekly in that ski resort town to a daily. In 1989, Mark Guerringue and Adam Hirshan started the Conway Daily Sun in a New Hampshire ski town. The Sun has since launched free dailies in Berlin, Laconia, and most recently the Portland, Maine, Daily Sun.

In 1995, the year Metro started in Sweden, the Palo Alto Daily News began in Northern California. Unlike Metro, which took years to show any profit, the Palo Alto paper hit break-even nine months after opening. Ten years later, the Daily News was sold to Knight Ridder for $25 million, a record price for any free daily.

A lot of history in the free-daily industry took place before the first issue of Metro ever hit the streets. We're not sure why Metro is daring enough to issue an inaccurate news release, but it hurts the credibility of a news organization that relies upon the public's trust.

Name of Denver free daily is hijacked online

2010-02-07T00:14:00.000-08:00

Kristie Hannon, publisher of the free Denver Daily News, was surprised as anyone to discover there was a Web site calling itself the Denver Daily News that was publishing local news stories.

What's worse, this faux Denver Daily News site was taking stories from other Denver publications and randomly changing words, sort of like the game Mad Libs, where players randomly change words in a story or song.

The Denver alt-weekly Westword gave this example. A Denver Post story originally reported this: "A sexual assault on a 13-year-old girl and a subsequent attack on her brother has resulted in multiple charges against the suspect."

The fake Denver Daily News site reported it this way: "A passionate conflict upon a 13-year-old lady as well as a successive conflict upon her hermit has resulted in mixed charges opposite a suspect."

Hannon has sent an e-mail to the site, which is registered in Denmark, telling it to stop. The fake site is violating both the Denver Daily News trademark as well as the copyright on the stories it is lifting and changing.

Bankruptcy filing squeezes free daily

2010-01-31T01:21:00.000-08:00

Fifteen years after it started, there is cause for concern about the future of California's first and most successful free daily, the Palo Alto Daily News. Its owner, MediaNews Group, has made several damaging changes and now has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

For many years, the Daily News was the poster boy for free daily newspapers. The Daily News grew and dominated its marketplace south of San Francisco. It was acquired by Knight Ridder for $25 million in 2005 — a record price for a paper its size.

The timing of the paper's owners to sell was fortuitous. A year later, shareholder revolt later that year forced Knight Ridder to sell off its papers and shut down. The Palo Alto paper was shunted off to MediaNews, a chain known more for cost cutting than great journalism. Not surprisingly, the Daily News closed the sister editions it has started in Berkeley, San Mateo, Burlingame, Redwood City and Los Gatos. It also stopped printing on Sunday and Monday.

In the past year, the Daily News dropped its distinctive page size (16 inches deep by 10 3/4-inches wide, known as a long tab). First it went to a short tab, which is almost a square (11-1/4 by 11-3/8 inches). Then, as free-daily.com reported, MediaNews chief executive Dean Singleton became irate when he learned of the change. He ordered the paper become a broadsheet, like its other newspapers in the Bay Area.

Now MediaNews is in bankruptcy court in Delaware, hoping a judge will reduce its debts from $930 million to $178 million. The filing is a "prepackaged" bankruptcy where the creditors (mostly banks) agreed upfront to allow the debt-reduction deal. The company's two top executives, CEO Dean Singleton and President Jody Lodovic, will be paid up to $1.49 million and $2.25 million, respectively, if the bankruptcy plan is approved March 4, according to the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club.

Once the bankruptcy is over, and huge debt-service payments are no longer an issue, MediaNews will be expected to produce profits that are within industry averages. Assets that don't produce profits will be closed.

Cost-cutting has crippled the Daily News, and it remains to be seen if its new format is a success. Given the need of Singleton and Lodovic to impress their owners with profits, one wonders how much time the Daily News will have to return to health.

Newspapers owned by MediaNews have avoided reporting information concerning its bankruptcy filing (Example 1, Example 2). Ironically, two of the most insightful stories about the case ("Post owner: don't shut off our phones" and "Execs cash in on Post parent bankruptcy") have been printed in the Denver Daily News, owned by the original owners of the Palo Alto Daily News, Jim Pavelich and Dave Price.

Portland (Maine) free daily is intensely local

2010-01-02T09:06:00.000-08:00

A veteran of the free daily industry has started a paper in Portland, Maine, that is intensely local. Of the issues we've seen of the Portland Daily Sun, every story on the front page has been local, and the body of the paper has been dominated by local copy. This is a different breed from the commuter free dailies that rely on wire copy. It is obvious that the editor, Curtis Robinson, lives, breathes and eats local news.

Robinson (left) helped free daily pioneer Jim Pavelich start the Summit Daily News in August 1989. He went on to the short-lived Ventura (California) Today. Later he was editor of the Aspen (Colorado) Daily News. Then he helped to start an independent Sunday-only paper in the valley that includes Aspen.

The Portland Daily Sun began in February 2009 and has a daily circulation of 14,000. It publishes Tuesday through Saturday. Robinson is partners with Adam Hirsham and Mark Guerringue of the Conway Daily Sun, a free daily community paper that has operated since 1989. The Conway paper's press prints the Portland paper. Hirsham and Guerringue are investors in free dailies in Berlin, N.H., and Livonia, N.H. Those papers also have the word "sun" in their name, suggesting the sun is rising all over New England.

Free-Daily.com asked Robinson the following questions:

Free-Daily.com: Why Portland?

Robinson: I have some family here (I'm a widower with a five-year-old son) and it scored in the 90 percent range for launching a free daily, and I wanted to do something East Coast, but I looked at six finalists before deciding ... and the real thing is that I just fell in love with Portland, a diverse, progressive urban area in a state that is perhaps less so — and love of place always helps if you're about to work 60-hour weeks. I also had the chance to partner with a couple of free daily veterans — they own three free dailies in New Hampshire, and one of those is in North Conway, about an hour from Portland. We're a separate setup, but really benefit from their established business practices, and of course the press. So it just felt right.

Free-Daily.com: What makes Portland a good place to start a free daily?

Robinson: Alchemy of people, place and such. I've developed a 25-point checklist and consult with people about this all the time — I'll get three or four calls a month now about free daily launches and that's always an early question. But it starts with independent businesses and walkable areas and then it gets tricky ... oddly, there's a huge debate about competition, print vs. all these local web sites and other factors. Then you walk around and get a "gut" feeling — beware of chain stores.

And part of that discussion is size — if you buy into the idea of micro-dailies, then how large can a city really be? Is a 15-25K daily circulation culturally relevant in a city of a million people? If you go bigger, can you keep rates low enough to be locally serving, or do you nudge into what amounts to regional merchants — again, people break all kinds of ways, but it's important to match that vision to your wallet.

Free-Daily.com: How many people do you have on your staff?

Robinson: We have three reporters, a half-dozen regular local contributors, three sales folks, and we use a local distribution company that was just a freakin' miracle dropped from above. I'm not sure third party distribution would be part of a "model" launch, but it really worked this time around. You just get lucky some days.

Free-Daily.com: In terms of sales, what area or vertical have you been most successful in, and which one has been the toughest?

Robinson: I never, ever feel 100 percent certain what the hell a "vertical" is — it seems to vary by who is doing the marketing. We've done well with restaurants and such, and the hardest is of course the agency accounts — just like every other free daily launch. And of course there are the typical reasons for that — but we've already had a major bank buying ads off its own push — that's what it takes. It was like that when we launched the Summit Daily News in 1989 (I've been at this a while) and it will be like that for a long time. Real Estate seems to be coming around — they are looking for good value.

Free-Daily.com: Have you broken even yet, and if not, do you have an idea when that will happen?

Robinson: We're on target to be what we call "cash flowing" in the spring, meaning we will pay our bills with what comes in ... accountants will explain that that's far, far different from "profit" and they're right, but on the path to sustainability it's one of the true milestones. Jim Pavelich of free daily fame (Vail, Palo Alto, San Francisco) once told me that the only reason to do the first year of a free daily is to get to the second year.

BTW — This is my third free daily startup — starting with the Summit Daily News (Frisco, Colorado) in 1989.

Free-Daily.com: Regarding news, what's the biggest controversy your paper has covered (or ignited)?

Robinson: We get one or two good "gets" every week or so — I have very experienced reporters — and we actually launched with a major story about an emergency response on one of the Portland city islands, where neighbors had to help treat the victim and a bystander drove the ambulance to the emergency response boat, all because of a staffing policy and communications glitch. We've stayed with that story and others.

A big "oops" in Santa Barbara

2009-12-23T00:42:00.000-08:00

When you print an apology that includes the sentence "The Daily Sound would never advocate for the assassination of our president or any other person," you know you're having a bad day.

The free daily in Santa Barbara, California, is apologizing for a column that many readers apparently interpreted as a call to take the life of the president.

Of course there are two sides to any story, and this is no exception. The Daily Sound printed this piece (here is a link) December 10 by Gina Perry, a resident who writes a column every other week for the paper. She slams Obama supporters including those who wanted to put a $200,000 bounty on the head of U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue, who is speaking out against the president's healthcare plan and proposed carbon emission legislation. The "bounty" was for anyone who could dig up personal dirt on Donohue that would force him to resign.

At the end of the column, Perry writes, "The most dangerous extremist in this country is the one running it. Perhaps a bounty should be put on his head."

Jeramy Gordon, the publisher and founder of the Daily Sound, wrote in a December 16 apology, "Even if the assassination of our president wasn’t Perry’s intended meaning — which she claims — it’s a conclusion that many highly educated people came to."

To Gordon's credit, he didn't fire Perry. His reasoning: "we carry the old-school ideal that fighting opposing opinions with more opinions and more words is the most effective way to right a perceived wrong." And to that end, Gordon has printed numerous letters critical of him and Perry.

Many publishers would have fired her in the hopes that the controversy would go away. At a corporate, chain-owned paper, it's easy to imagine a boss at the home office calling the local publisher and yelling, "What the hell is going on there? Fire that woman!"

On the other hand, Gordon did offer a full apology and explained that the column wasn't edited before being published. "This is truly an unfortunate situation and we’ve learned our lesson that guest opinion pieces need to be more closely monitored," Gordon wrote.

Still, we can imagine that when the calls started rolling in after Perry's column first appeared, Gordon probably felt like somebody in a Southwest Airlines commercial that has the tag line "Want to get away?"

Column about snow causes a storm

2009-12-10T09:20:00.000-08:00

A controversy has erupted in Colorado over a free daily's firing of a reporter who criticized Vail Resorts for exaggerating snowfall reports.

The reasons behind the firing of Bob Berwyn are in dispute.

A Denver Post columnist says Berwyn was fired by the Summit Daily News for his Nov. 19 column, which chided Vail Resorts for saying it got so much snow that it had to shut its headquarters down. The company's headquarters are in the Denver suburb of Broomfield — 70 miles from the slopes on Colorado's front range. While it was snowing in Broomfield, it was sunny on the ski slopes.

Berwyn pointed this fact out at the end of the column.

"I sometimes wonder whether the ski industry wouldn't benefit more from being completely transparent about weather and snowfall with its customers," Berwyn wrote.

The Summit Daily News, based in the ski town of Breckenridge (above), gets a lot of its advertising from Vail Resorts, the owner of ski-lifts and real estate offices in that town as well as Vail.

Berwyn told the Denver Post that Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz called to cancel his ads — and two weeks later Berwyn was out of a job.

The publisher of Summit Daily News, Jim Morgan, denies that pressure from Vail Resorts led to Berwyn's firing.

Morgan wrote: "[O]ur decision to terminate his employment [was] based on a series of events, documented in reviews over a significant period of time."

Adding another dimension to the controversy, Katz, the head of Vail resorts, issued a news release complaining Berwyn never attempted to reach the company for its side of the story. Also, Katz asks why would he be hyping the snow in October, when his resorts aren't even open?

Katz says he only put his ads on a "temporary" hold after he suspected Berwyn was repeating what Katz said was a private conversation they had after the column. Katz said he never threatened to permanently pull his ads.

Commentary
All of this left my head spinning. Maybe it's a case of a big advertiser pushing around a newspaper over critical coverage, or perhaps it is a bad reporter making up a story as to why he got fired. I don't know.

And if Berwyn is going to go after the ski industry for exaggerating snow accumulations, why didn't he do it as a big blockbuster front-page story instead of a sentence or two buried at the end of a long column?

One other thing I don't know, and this has nothing to do with journalism, but why does a ski resort operator have its headquarters 70 miles from the slopes?

Washington Post redesigns Express

2009-12-09T21:19:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post has redesigned its free daily, Express, by changing fonts, adding more color and going to a magazine approach on the front page.

Instead, Express now has a cover story each day consisting of a headline and large photo — but no text. Inside Express is devoting a full-page to the cover story, giving a writer an opportunity to go into more depth than usual.

The redesign wasn't a radical change — sometimes designers go nuts and readers don't recognize the new product — but instead appeared to be tweaking of an already successful free daily.

Unlike RedEye, TBT, Metro or amNewYork, Express isn't putting much celebrity news on the cover. Instead, the D.C. free daily has a heavy diet of hard news. Recent cover stories include:

Notice that the biggest tabloid story during this period — Tiger Woods — wasn't a cover story, though it was teased on the front a couple of times.

"Our goal is to pack more news onto our pages than ever before while at the same time making the paper more attractive and easier to navigate," said a front page note introducing the redesign on Nov. 30.

As for the fonts, Express changed its news headline font from Knockout to Flama, its features headline font from Miller to Farnham, and its body copy (and decks) from Miller to Fenway. Also, they're using Popular in places.

Chicago RedEye increases circulation to 250,000

2009-12-03T14:48:00.000-08:00

Amid the financial disaster that is the Tribune Company, there is a shining star — RedEye, the company's free daily in Chicago. It attracts readers in the coveted 18-34 age group that its older sibling, the Chicago Tribune, is unable to reach.

On January 4, RedEye plans to boost its circulation from 200,000 to 250,000 a day — a 25% increase — to keep its retail outlets well stocked with the paper throughout the day. It is also boosting distribution to the campuses of about 30 colleges.

RedEye's content is a combination of "to the point" news (short stories), a heavy helping of pop culture and lots of entertainment coverage. If you want in-depth political or business coverage, pick up the Tribune.

"RedEye is a key brand within our content portfolio, reaching Chicagoans that are young and time-pressed. Advertisers realize that RedEye connects them with this audience better than any other player in the market," said Kurt Mueller, general manager of RedEye.

Buyer emerges for Arizona free daily

2009-11-26T13:13:00.000-08:00

Randy Miller — the owner of a free daily in Telluride, Colo., and a weekly in Tucson, Ariz. — has reached an agreement to buy the free daily East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Ariz., rescuing it from closure.

The Tribune switched from paid to free in October 2007. But earlier this year owner Freedom Communications entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, which forced the company to either close or sell unprofitable operations. Freedom put the Tribune up for sale, and if no buyer was found by Dec. 31, the paper was to close.

Terms weren't disclosed. But Miller said he hoped to keep a "substantial number" of the Tribune's remaining 140 employees, according to a report by the Tribune.

Miller is the former owner of the Colorado Daily in Boulder, one of the earliest free dailes. He sold it in 2007 to the owner of Boulder's other newspaper, The Daily Camera.

Miller currently owns the Telluride Daily Planet and the Tucson alt-weekly The Explorer. Miller's Explorer is printed on the Tribune's new, $4 million press, which he will now own.

The Tribune won a Pulitzer this year for a series that showed how a sheriff's emphasis on enforcing immigration laws reduced response times for other types of crime.

A major challenge Miller will face is increasing the Tribune's advertising base, which has been hard hit by the downturn in the housing market.

Good news, bad news

2009-11-06T16:26:00.000-08:00

The good news ... Metro says it has become the 5th largest circulated newspaper in the United States, with a combined circulation (Boston, NY and Philly) of 590,553. Metro claims it is the country's fifth largest circulation paper, pulling ahead of the Washington Post, with 582,844 (Monday-Saturday).

Of course advertisers still favor paid circulation papers, so the Washington Post will continue to charge more per column inch than Metro. But Metro, and other free dailies, continue to have strong and growing readership numbers while paid papers are losing ground.

The Washington Post, for instance, lost 5 percent of its circulation year over year in the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation. The San Francisco Chronicle saw its circulation plunge 26 percent during the period. Nationally, the overall decrease in paid circulation was 10 percent.

Metro has another bragging right — it commmissioned a Scarborough survey which found Metro was No. 1 among adults 18-49 in its three markets.

The bad news ... The experiment of converting the Mesa (Ariz.) Tribune from paid to free circulation has failed. The owners, Freedom Communications, have announced the paper will close Dec. 30 unless a buyer is found. That will result in the layoff about 140 employees.

Despite winning a Pulitzer a year ago, the Tribune hasn't made money in two years. The paper started in 1891. Mesa is a suburb of Phoenix, an area hard-hit by the housing industry meltdown.

Metro puts serifs on headlines

2009-09-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

Metro in NY, Philly and Boston will unveil a redesign on Monday that a press release says will help the free daily in "targeting the hard-to-reach metropolitan." The big changes we see on the front are:

Starting Monday, Metro will be divided into three sections:

Metro is also adding material from CNN, Self, Fodor’s, Wired, Chow.com, Thrillist, DealBreaker.com, Geeksugar, Lucky and Flavorpill.

“Heightened expert analysis, commentary, powerful pictures and reader views will enhance Metro’s editorial core keeping the news dynamic, fresh and interesting," says Tony Metcalf, editor-in-chief, Metro US. "Metro is known to innovate, changing print and design history several times, and leading the pack in targeting the hard-to-reach metropolitan. This redesign is the next stage of that."

"This is a bigger change than a standard redesign; we are in the middle of transforming the newspaper itself," says Per Mikael Jensen, CEO of Metro International. “Our ambition is to continue to deliver the free newspaper of choice.”

New evening free daily starts in Toronto

2009-09-09T10:38:00.000-07:00

Newsboys and girls, dressed in poorboy caps and white oxford shirts yelling "Extra! Extra!," handed out copies of Toronto's newest daily, t.o.night, to people on the streets of Canada's most populous city yesterday afternoon.

"We wouldn't dare launch another paper in the morning — there are already six out there," John Cameron, publisher of the newspaper, told the CBC. "The market is already oversaturated, in my opinion."

The free paper is printed on magazine-style glossy paper and carries mostly wire news stories and copy from Cameron's local entertainment Web site, BlogTO.

Cameron said advertisers are already responding.

"We are [the] last touch point that advertisers get before consumers go home — readers are sitting on a train on the way home. They want to be entertained," said Cameron. "And there's ... nothing there to provide that."

Bulletin: An ad lead for free dailies

2009-08-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

Budweiser has launched a new campaign with the slogan "Good Times ... They're Out There," and they want to reach drinkers in the 18-24 demo. According to Marketing News, Bud's interested in free dailies that target young readers: "[P]ress executions will focus on free dailies and magazines such as Time Out, Shortlist, Empire and Total Film to target people when they are looking for a night out."

Palo Alto paper goes from tab to broadsheet

2009-08-18T09:04:00.000-07:00

CORRECTION: The following item incorrectly stated that the Daily News in Palo Alto, Calif., was the first free daily to go broadsheet. Actually, the Starkville (Mississippi) Dispatch has that distinction, launching on June 8, 2009. Our thanks to Peter Imes of the Dispatch for pointing out the error — Nov. 17, 2009

The pioneering Daily News in Palo Alto has made another innovative move — switching this morning from a tabloid to a full-sized broadsheet. Free-Daily.com first reported the change July 25.

The move is certainly a risk. Part of the distinctive style of the successful Daily News (formerly the Palo Alto Daily News) was its compact "long-tab" format, 11- by 16.25-inches. The size allowed it to display three or four news stories on the front as well as a strip of ads at the bottom. The format, which debuted in 1995, has been frequently copied.

But a risk is probably what the Daily News has got to take at this point in its history. For its first 10 years (1995-2005), the paper was a major success story, with its circulation going from 3,000 to 67,000 per day. The page count ranged up to 100 per day. Each edition carried a couple hundred local ads. It sprouted sister papers in five other San Francisco Bay Area communities.

In 2005, the original owners sold the paper and ownership changed a couple of times, from Knight Ridder to McClatchy and now to MediaNews Group, a chain known for cost-cutting, not innovation. Changes by new management, including the firing of a popular editor, jolted the paper's momentum into reverse. Before long, the Daily News was closing editions, laying off employees and desperately making format changes to stop the slide.

To make matters worse, the former owners opened a competing paper, The Daily Post.

In May, local management decided to switch the Daily News switched from the long-tab to a short tab (10.75- x 11.375 inches). A source said the Daily News switched from a commercial printer to presses operated by a sister paper in San Jose, Calif. The San Jose pressmen didn't want to print the long tab size paper that the Palo Alto Daily News had been using.

The move wasn't communicated to the boss of MediaNews Group, Dean Singleton, who was furious when he saw the small format. He likes broadsheets.

While the broadsheet size gives the Daily News several advantages:

It's been a rough couple of years for the Daily News. Obviously management hopes this move will get the paper back on track.

Free daily thrives in Denver suburb

2009-08-04T14:02:00.000-07:00

In the discussion of free dailies, one successful paper hasn't received much attention. The Aurora Sentinel has been serving the Denver suburb of Aurora since 2004. The Sentinel is a tab with a page count that ranges from 24 to 28 Monday-Friday and 56-60 for its weekend edition, according to Managing Editor David Cole.

Cole has a newsroom with 10 people, and a couple more if you count interns.

Of Denver's suburbs, Aurora is the largest with more than 300,000 people.

"We're more like a metro area," Cole said.

For a century, Denver had two paid-circulation dailies, The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. On Feb. 27, the Rocky closed, leaving the Post as the big paper in Colorado.

"The demise of the Rocky has been a boost, but not a real noticeable one. Circulation is up a bit, but advertising is still pretty stagnant — like everyone else. We're independent, and we've been in the black the entire time, so we're hanging in there," Cole told us in an e-mail.

The Rocky's demise didn't leave Denver without newspaper competition. The city still has a feisty alt-weekly, Westword, and a free daily, The Denver Daily News, which is part of a group that includes the Vail (Colo.) Mountaineer and The Daily Post in Palo Alto, Calif.

The Denver Daily News stays in Denver, however, and the Aurora Sentinel stays in Aurora.

"I think what (Denver Daily News editor) Tad (Rickman) is doing is admirable, but we don't consider them as competition," Cole said.

The Denver Post circulates in all of that city's suburbs, but with budget cuts, its newsroom is smaller and less ambitious than in the past.

"The Denver Post largely ignores us, and we regularly scoop them on good stories," said Cole.

The Sentinel transitioned from a weekly to a daily, a shift that more community weekly papers might consider.

Cole explained that the Sentinel has been in existence, in one name or another, for more than 100 years as a weekly, mailed to home subscribers.

In 2004, Sentinel Publisher H. Harrison Cochran launched the Aurora Daily Sun, a free rack daily Monday-Friday. He continued to publish The Aurora Sentinel once a week, mailing it to subscribers.

Two years ago, he combined the Aurora Sentinel and Daily Sun under the Sentinel title. Now they're a five-day daily, with a weekend edition.

Colorado has 13 free dailies — more than any other state. In addition to the Aurora Sentinel and Denver Daily News, there are free dailies in Aspen (two of them!), Boulder, Colorado Springs, Frisco, Glenwood Springs, Granby, Steamboat Springs, Telluride and Vail (two).

Free daily takes on paid daily in Mississippi

2009-07-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

Starkville, Mississippi, a city of 24,000 that is home to Mississippi State University, has become one of the few places in the United States with two separately owned daily newspapers, one of them being a free daily.

The paid daily in town is the Starkville Daily News, established in 1903. But The Commercial Dispatch in nearby Columbus has also served Starkville for many years.

On July 8, the Commercial Dispatch launched the free Starkville Dispatch, which is now available in the afternoon Monday through Friday and on Sunday morning.

“In a time when most news about newspapers is doom and gloom, we hope this expansion will show that our industry is still alive and viable in the Golden Triangle,” said Dispatch Editor and Publisher Birney Imes in an announcement July 8. “Starkville is a dynamic community, and the distance separating it and Columbus seems to be shrinking all the time. Residents of both communities visit the other for work, entertainment, dining and education.”

(We were tipped off about this story by Piet Bakker's Newspaper Innovation blog. All tips to free-daily.com are appreciated.)

Toronto to get an evening free daily

2009-07-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

Toronto, which already has two morning free dailies (24 hours and Metro), will get an evening free paper called t.o.night starting Sept. 8.

It's not part of a newspaper chain, like nearly all of Canada's free dailies, but instead is the product of web-oriented company in Toronto, FreshDaily, which publishes three city-centric websites (Toronto’s blogTO, Vancouver’s Beyond Robson and Montreal’s Midnight Poutine) covering arts, music, film, fashion, food and local news. Each site has two full-time editors and draws content from a host of local contributors, with advertisers paying the bills, according to local multimedia commentator Neil Sanderson.

T.o.night was announced on blogTO, which said the new paper will be published 5 times a week with an initial circulation of 100,000 copies a day. All copies will be distributed between 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. near subway stops and other transit touch-points in the downtown core.

"As far as local content, t.o.night will put more emphasis on event information, restaurant reviews and other happenings that will allow readers to plan their evenings as they look to unwind after a long day at the office," the company's announcement says.

The announcement also said, "the new daily will also come complete with a full page of local content created by blogTO."

RUSHHOUR'S OVER: Piet Bakker's Newspaper Innovation blog reports that CanWest's RushHour free dailies in Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton have quietly closed. They launched in 2006 after the youth-oriented free daily Dose came and went. The free daily market in Canada is owned by Metro and 24 hours/heures.

Vail Daily's attempt to hire rival backfires

2009-07-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, the most senior news writer in Colorado's Vail Valley, Randy Wyrick, was fired by the Vail Daily newspaper and ended up becoming a truck driver.

When the Vail Mountaineer started last year, one of its first hires was Wyrick.

Now, according to the Mountaineer, the Vail Daily's editor and publisher, Don Rogers, has offered Wyrick a job.

"Evidently, Mr. Wyrick is only now an attractive hire once he became a key employee of the Mountaineer," the Mountaineer's attorney, Todd I. Freeman, wrote in a cease-and-desist letter to the Vail Daily.

In the letter, which the Mountaineer gleefully printed on its front page July 17, Freeman says the Vail Daily has tried to lure away other Mountaineer employees including its senior salesman.

The Vail Daily hasn't commented on the letter.

The letter is the most recent in a series of skirmishes between the free newspapers that began when the Mountaineer began printing 13 months ago. Mountaineer owner Jim Pavelich started the Vail Daily in 1984 and sold it in 1993 to the Reno, Nev.-based Swift Newspapers chain. He launched the Mountaineer because he was disgusted at his old paper's negative tone, which he said conveyed the idea that its writers hated living in Vail.

In the past year, the papers have battled over whether the Mountaineer can distribute at Starbucks (apparently the Vail Daily has an exclusive deal) and over deals the Vail Daily allegedly made that gave low rates to advertisers who promised not to buy space in the Mountaineer. In other words, it's an old fashioned newspaper war in one of the nation's last two-newspaper towns.

Free daily in California going broadsheet

2009-07-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

In Palo Alto, Calif., the Daily News is once again going to change its page size. This time it will become a 21-inch deep broadsheet.

The paper, one of the earliest and most successful free dailies, dropped its distinctive long tab (16.25-x-11-inch) format in May for a short tab that's almost a square (11.5 inches wide by 11.25 inches deep).

The change was made because the paper switched presses from a commercial jobber to a facility owned by its parent company, MediaNews Group, where the San Jose Mercury News is printed.

I'm told that this fall, the Daily News will switch to the same size as the Mercury News, 11.5 inches wide and 21 inches deep.

Free dailies have usually been printed as tabloids because they're easier to hold, especially on mass transit. The Daily News doesn't distribute much of its circulation on mass transit, but instead relies on the public to pick up its papers from news-racks or other public distribution points. So the size change might not be that important to Daily News readers.

Traditionally, advertisers have favored the broadsheet size, especially department stores which have wanted to display women's apparel in a large format that would allow big photographs. This switch to a larger size might result in more ads, which would be good news for a paper that has been forced to eliminate several of its editions and discontinue publishing on Sundays and Mondays due to a drop in advertising.

CORRECTION: The previous item incorrectly stated that the Daily News of Palo Alto, Calif., would be the first free daily to go broadsheet. That reference has been omitted. Actually, the Starkville (Mississippi) Dispatch has that distinction, launching on June 8, 2009, more than two months before the Palo Alto paper switched to a broadsheet. Our thanks to Peter Imes of the Dispatch for pointing out the error — Nov. 17, 2009

Paper's owner flips over format change

2009-07-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

Funny story out of California. I'm told that Dean Singleton, head of MediaNews Group, became irate when he learned that his free daily in Palo Alto, Calif. had drastically reduced its page size without telling him.

The Palo Alto Daily News had been 16.25 x 11 inches, but local management decided to shrink the size to 10.75 x 11.375 inches.

The change was made in early May, but apparently nobody told the boss. When he found out, he became enraged. He demanded to know who made the change, and apparently some management positions have changed as a result.

A source says the Daily News switched from a commercial printer to presses operated by a sister paper in San Jose, Calif. The San Jose printers didn't want to print the size paper that the Palo Alto Daily News had been using.

In the next few months, the Daily News will either revert to its previous size or, possibly, go to a broadsheet. If it does, it might be the first free broadsheet ever -- an interesting idea.

I've thought for many years that free dailies might attract more upscale readers (and top dollar advertisers) if they became broadsheets. The Palo Alto Daily News, which has blazed trails before, might reach new heights as a broadsheet. It's certainly worth a shot.

Metro Philly briefly suspends publication

2009-07-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

Metro Philadelphia stopped printing last week but could be back on the streets as early as today, its owner tells the rival Philadelphia Inquirer.

"We decided to take a few days off," said Yggers "Julius" Mortensen, chief executive of Seabay, which financed the sale of the Philly, Boston and NY Metros to former Metro International CEO Pelle Tornberg. "I can confirm that we're not closing down."

There's no word of the closure on the paper's website.

Metro employees said the newspaper announced in last Thursday's issue that it was taking a week off to celebrate Independence Day, the Inquirer reported.

The Inquirer story did not give the exact reasons for the closure, which came one month after the paper was sold to Seabay.

Mortensen said the suspension "quite regular" and was "no reflection" on either the newspaper's health or the poor business climate for the news media.

Paper sorry for 'Jewish descent' reference

2009-07-07T14:39:00.000-07:00

Readers of Colorado's Vail Daily were offended by an article that said a burglary suspect was “of Jewish or Eastern European descent.”

The paper apparently decided to use the offensive term after getting a news release from the sheriff's department that said the suspect had “dark hair, large nose, pierced ears, narrow face and eyes that were close together.”

But the sheriff never used the term “of Jewish or Eastern European descent" -- that was something the Vail Daily staff created on their own, according to a story by Managing Editor Matt Zalaznick.

Similar articles have routinely included suspects described as Hispanic or white, with no expressions of outrage from readers. ...

Our readers point out that while mentioning ethnicity is always a slippery slope, using “Jewish descent” is a bit different because Judaism is, first of all, a religion. They argue we probably wouldn't describe a suspect in a suspect as Christian or Muslim. They're probably right.

On the other hand, many Jews — some of whom observe and some of whom don't observe the religion — consider Judaism to be their ethnicity and their culture. Eastern European Jews often don't feel connected to any one country. That's because their families originated in territories that either changed hands between governments or their families had to flee their villages under threat of massacre and death. Many of these Jews, therefore, think of their Jewishness in the same way their neighbors identify themselves as Irish, Mexican, Swedish or Japanese.

Because of that — and in the press of deadline — we found it appropriate that someone could be described as looking Jewish.

According to Zalaznick, two editors saw the "Jewish descent" reference before the paper was printed. It appears nobody lost their job over this one.

Does size matter? The jury is out!

2009-05-29T21:50:00.000-07:00

A free daily in California has reduced the height of its pages from 16 inches to 11.25 inches.

The Palo Alto Daily News made the change May 5, according to the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club. The move was required when the paper changed press rooms. But it raises the question of what size do readers prefer?

We don't have any opinion on that, but we can see the pros and cons. The pros are that a smaller paper might fit under a person's arm better and increase page count. The cons are that there are fewer objects to see on each page and a taller paper won't be mistaken for junk mail.

Palo Alto, a city about 30 miles south of San Francisco, is a fiercely competitive market for free dailies, with the Palo Alto Daily News (recently changing its name to "The Daily News") dominating the market for years. The Daily Journal, based in San Mateo, began distributing in Palo Alto a few years ago. And the founders of the Daily News, who sold the paper in 2005, have started the Palo Alto Daily Post. And each paper has a different page size. It may take years to sort out which page size readers prefer the most.

Tobacco ad ruling hits Canadian free dailies

2009-05-28T13:09:00.000-07:00

With cigarette ads prohibited on TV in Canada, free dailies have benefitted from tobacco advertising. The Tobacco Act allowed cigarette ads in publications if they had an adult readership of at least 85 percent. A new bill in the federal legislature (C-32) would eliminate that provision. Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said the tougher advertising regulations are in response to a "wave" of tobacco advertising in the last few years in publications that are easily accessible by young people, according to a report by CanWest, a publisher of free dailies. Publishers are crying foul. If these new restrictions are approved, free dailies could be hit hard.

Free daily planned for Cape Cod

2009-05-19T13:17:00.000-07:00

Here's one from the I-wish-I-had-thought-of-that department: GateHouse Media New England will launch a free, seasonal daily on Cape Cod that will start in June and end on Labor Day.

The new publication, Cape Cod Day, will publish Tuesday through Saturday and will be distributed free across Cape Cod at hundreds of locations with an average daily distribution of 25,000, according to announcement posted on the company's WickedLocal website.

“The focus on the new daily paper will specifically target the tens of thousands of summer visitors, as well as vacationing Cape Codders, who enjoy this beautiful place we get to call home year-round,” said Mark Skala, publisher of GateHouse Media’s Cape Cod region. “The editorial focus of Cape Cod Day will be to produce fun, informative stories and resources for readers such as local news, things to do with the family, arts and entertainment features, and stories that highlight the people, businesses and natural beauty of the Cape environment.

“This is a paper produced by Cape Codders who call Cape Cod home and want to offer visitors and tourists a glimpse of the Cape through our perspective,” said Skala. “This new free daily will also be an affordable alternative to advertisers, and to readers who don’t want to spend $1 a day for a newspaper.”

Gate House already publishes a number of weekly papers in the area, and the new paper will be produced out of its newsroom in Orleans.

Within hours of the company’s internal announcement about the planned launch, Skala said the sales force had already booked front page ads with local Cape Cod businesses for the entire 11-week print run.

“The initial response so far to Cape Cod Day has been incredibly positive and encouraging,” said Skala. “People are hungry to have an alternative source for news, information and a new, affordable opportunity for local businesses to advertise.”

The concept has been tested before. In Portsmouth, N.H., Ottaway Newspapers has published a summer-only, five-day-a-week paper, the Daily Beachcomber, for the past two seasons, Editor & Publisher points out.

Anschutz's San Francisco City Star burns out

2009-05-15T23:58:00.001-07:00

Three months after closing the Baltimore Examiner, conservative billionaire Phil Anschutz is halting daily distribution of one of his papers in San Francisco — The City Star.

The City Star will become a section on Wednesdays and Fridays within The Examiner, Anschutz's other free daily in San Francisco.

The 12-page final edition of The City Star on Friday (shown here) consisted of 15 state and national wire stories even though it said "San Francisco's Free Daily Neighborhood Newspaper" on its masthead. Not one mentioned any of San Francisco's neighborhoods. The front page stories were about the state budget crunch, a star of the "slum dog" movie losing his home in India and rapper DMX being released from an Arizona jail.

The final edition had only 11 display ads (not including classifieds). The number of people laid off wasn't known.

Metro sells NY, Philly, Boston to its former CEO

2009-05-11T14:41:00.001-07:00

The Metro International chain announced today (May 11, 2009) that it is selling its three U.S. editions to a group started by former Metro chief executive Pelle Törnberg (pictured) for $2 million.

Törnberg was the founding CEO of Metro, which started in Sweden in 1995. He expanded Metro around the world, but left the company in 2007 with heavy debts. Metro found new readers, but had a harder time finding profits.

Törnberg's Seabay Media Holdings will publish Metro under a service-and-licensing agreement with Metro International, a European holding company with newspapers worldwide.

The three newspapers — in Boston, New York and Philadelphia — have a combined circulation of 590,000 copies per day and reach about 1.2 million readers.

The New York Times Co. will retain its 49 percent stake in Metro Boston for now. But with the Times under pressure to cut costs, it could possibly sell that stake.

The sale follows Metro International's closure of its operations in Spain. Most of Metro's losses last year came from its operations in Spain and the U.S.

The transaction is scheduled to close June 1.

Philly publisher out after trying to buy paper

2009-05-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

The buzz in Philadelphia is that Eric Mayberry is no longer publisher of that city's edition of Metro, but his parting with the company appears to be on friendly terms. Mayberry was negotiating with his employer to buy the paper. The negotiations fell through and now he's a consultant. Metro is among his clients. He plans to help Metro lobby for state and city legal ads now reserved for paid papers like the Philadelphia Inquirer. Mayberry also tells the Web site Philly.com that he wlll write a column for Metro, subject "to be determined."

Metro International president Per Mikael Jensen says in a press release that Mayberry "is leaving Metro Philadelphia in much better shape than when he arrived."

As we have said previously, Philadelphia Metro was transformed during Mayberry's reign as publisher. The content became more lively and upbeat, with staff written stories replacing wire copy. The emphasis switched from trying to reach transit riders to reaching younger readers coveted by advertisers. Philly Metro also picked up a number of A-list advertisers, which has the effect of raising the stature of the paper.

Paid paper in Colorado launches free daily

2009-04-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

Colorado, the state with the most free dailies, is getting yet another one.

The paid Colordo Springs Gazette announced Tuesday that on May 6 it will launch a new, free, four-day a week newspaper targeted at the city's downtown and west side and Manitou Springs.

The new publisher of The Gazette is Steve Pope, formerly of the Vail Daily, one of the first free dailies. Pope replaced Scott McKibben, who had previously headed the San Francisco Examiner, also a free daily. So it's our guess that the concept of free dailies had been talked about at The Gazette for quite a while.

Today's announcement suggests the creation of Ink is both a defensive and offensive move.

• Defensive in the sense that Colorado Springs is a ripe market for a free daily in a state where most of the other major cities already have them — Ink will make it less likely that somebody else will start a free paper in the Springs.

• Offensive in that it will attempt to attract small advertisers who can't afford the paid Gazette.

The printing schedule will be different than other papers — Ink will appear Wednesday through Saturday, hitting the days that advertisers have gradually moved toward in other newspapers.

California free daily group makes deep cuts

2009-04-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

The Palo Alto Daily News, located about 30 miles south of San Francisco, has eliminated its Sunday edition and closed its sister papers in three cities in neighboring San Mateo County.

Last June, the Palo Alto paper dropped its Monday edition. So, in less than a year, it has gone from publishing seven days a week to five. Only a few years ago, the Palo Alto Daily News was growing, adding editions and regularly printing papers with 100 pages or more. Now its page count ranges from 28 to 52 depending on the day of the week.

The three editions that were canceled were the Burlingame Daily News, San Mateo Daily News and Redwood City Daily News.

The three competed in an unusually crowded market of free daily newspapers. San Mateo County also has the San Mateo Daily Journal, The Daily Post (based in Palo Alto but distributed in San Mateo County), and the San Francisco Examiner, which has been a free daily for several years.

The departure of the Daily News should be helpful to the Journal and Post, which cover the county closely. The Examiner still distributes in San Mateo County but closed its Burlingame and Redwood City offices a couple of years ago, insiders tell us.

The other paper in that area is the San Mateo County Times, a paid broadsheet owned by MediaNews Group, which also owns the Daily News.

"The two newspapers have been sharing the same local stories and ads for nearly three years," an announcement on the front of the Burlingame Daily News' last edition said. "The Times will continue to cover the Burlingame area, so our readers and advertisers will not be left without a good local newspaper. It's been a good run and we will miss covering news in your neighborhood, but look forward to reading all about it in the Times."

Four free dailies drop the AP

2009-04-03T19:39:00.000-07:00

The three U.S. editions of Metro (New York, Philadelphia and Boston) and the independently-owned Denver (Colo.) Daily News have dropped the Associated Press wire service in the past month.

Cost was a factor for all four publications. AP charges member papers based on their circulation, which puts free dailies at a disadvantage since a 100,000 circulation free paper doesn't generate anywhere near the revenue of a 100,000 paid circulation paper.

Other wire services such as Reuters and Bloomberg cost much less and still deliver the big stories. However, AP does a better job at regional news and sports — it has bureaus in all 50 states and can use the copy of its approximately 1,700 member papers.

CNN plans to offer a wire service for newspapers this fall, and that might lead to more defections from AP.

AP has also become less attractive to free daily publishers because its stories are now transmitted on a real time basis on a variety of different platforms — TV, radio, the Internet, mobile phones and even TV screens at point-of-sale locations such as gas pumps. The challenge for free dailies is to provide news to readers that actually seems new.

Metro intends to fill its pages with more staff-written material as well as copy from its papers around the world.

“We believe that the future of our titles lies in producing as much of our own material as possible,” Tony Metcalf, editor in chief of Metro USA, said in a statement. “By relying more on our own reporting staff, we make a substantial saving while protecting the newspapers’ quality and improving relevance to our local markets.”

Starbucks ends ban of Vail paper

2009-04-02T01:06:00.000-07:00

Starbucks has dropped its ban of one of Vail's two free daily newspapers, ending what had become a venti sized controversy at the Colorado ski resort.

The 25-year-old Vail Daily, owned by Swift Newspapers of Reno, Nev., struck an agreement with the local management of Starbucks to exclude the town's new free daily, the Vail Mountaineer, from its cafes.

When Mountaineer owner Jim Pavelich learned of the ban, he began to personally hand out copies of his paper in front of Starbucks, telling residents that his paper was under attack by two big corporations, Starbucks and Swift. He also told readers of the Mountaineer about the ban under a front page story with the headline "Corporate greed."

It didn't take more than a day or two for the ban to fall apart. Employees of Starbucks apparently felt sympathetic for Pavelich, who continued to pass out newspapers during a blinding snowstorm. According to the Mountaineer, they brought him hot coffee and gloves. Soon the ban was dropped.

The Vail Daily did not report on the Starbucks controversy. But in an April Fool's Day article, it attempted to make fun of the Mountaineer. The fictitious article claimed Pavelich had bought a stake in the Vail Daily because “I want to make sure they in fact do all those dastardly things I have been saying they are doing ... I’d sleep a little better if the rotten things I’m saying about them were actually true.”

A rollicking newspaper war in Vail

2009-03-27T12:58:00.000-07:00

A battle between the two free dailies in the beautiful ski resort of Vail is getting downright ugly.

The Vail Daily, the town's 25-year-old chain-owned paper, has obtained a deal with the local Starbucks stores to keep the other paper out of those stores. The other paper, the Vail Mountaineer, fired back with a front page editorial slamming the deal, headlined "Corporate Greed."

The editorial played off of the idea that Starbucks is an out-of-town chain and the Vail Daily is owned by an out-of-town chain, Swift Newspapers of Reno, Nev. The man who sold the Vail Daily to Swift, however, is Jim Pavelich, who is the driving force behind the Mountaineer.

According to the Mountaineer, the Vail Daily also threatened two children's charities just prior to their fundraisers by threatening to withhold any support if the charities accepted free ads from the Mountaineer. The Mountaineer also claims that the Vail Daily is offering deep discounts to advertisers if they sign a nondisclosure agreement promising not to disclose their ad rates to other customers of the paper. The Vail Daily hasn't used its paper to respond to the allegations.

Denver daily shows how it is done

2009-03-03T13:50:00.001-08:00

With the closure of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, the free daily in that city, the Denver Daily News, is making the most of the situation. It's headline Friday proclaimed "We're a 2-daily town." And the local TV media has picked up the story. Here's a link to the report on the local Fox affiliate. One correction to the item below. The Denver Daily News's circulation is 22,001. Given a pass-along rate of two or three per copy, and the DDN could be a very potent competitor to the city's remaining paid daily, The Denver Post.

Media got it wrong about Denver's newspapers

2009-03-01T07:05:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you've read a dozen stories by now about the death of Denver's Rocky Mountain News, which closed just short of its 150th birthday. The Rocky had been battling head to head with The Denver Post for more than a century. But every story I've seen has suggested that after the Rocky's final issue on Friday, Denver had become a one newspaper town.

Actually, Denver has a successful free daily newspaper that has been plugging along for eight years: The Denver Daily News, circulation 10,000.

It may not be a paid newspaper nor as large as the Post or Rocky, but it makes money and serves the community with news five days a week. The paper's distribution area includes the upscale Lodo neighborhood and most of downtown Denver.

Owner Jim Pavelich says newspapers need to be able to adapt to a changing business model if they are to expect to survive.

“Newspapers are not a dying industry, they’re a changing one,” Pavelich says, according to a story in his own paper. “It’s sad to see such an institution shut down, but we’ve expected it for years."

"That’s why we started the Denver Daily News eight years ago. The days of the big monopoly newspapers are done, but we think our model leaves room for growth," he explains.

CHANGES IN BOULDER, TOO

The closure of the Rocky means another change in ownership of Boulder's Colorado Daily, one of the earliest free daily newspaper. The Rocky's owner, E.W. Scripps Co., was partners with the Post's owner, MediaNews Group, in a number of publications in the Denver area including the Boulder Daily Camera and its Colorado Daily. With Scripps pulling out of Denver, it has turned over ownership of those papers to MediaNews, headed by Dean Singleton of Denver.

Singleton is quoted in the Post as saying he sees opportunities for for joint projects between the Post and the Boulder papers. For instance, instead of both the Post and Camera each assigning a reporter to cover the Denver Broncos, the papers will share the work of one reporter.

The Colorado Daily, which had been an independent newspaper from the early 1970s until about two years ago, now shares office space with the Boulder Daily Camera, which had long been its competitor.

The Colorado Daily was the student newspaper at the University of Colorado in Boulder until 1971 when the university's regents kicked it off campus due to its anti-Vietnam War views. It became a viable, independent community newspaper over the next couple of decades while never dropping its liberal politics. Now, ironically, it is headed Singleton, who was one of George W. Bush's major fundraisers.

New Portland, Maine free daily hits streets

2009-02-04T11:48:00.000-08:00

The editor of the new Portland Daily Sun admits that on the paper's first day people asked him if he's lost his mind. "I joke with them and say 'You know newspapers are dead because you read it in the paper,'" told KCSH-TV. While large metro dailies are having problems, Robinson said that free dailies are holding their own and that Portland is an ideal market because it is a walkable town with lots of coffee houses and an issue-oriented population. "Portland is a news factory. And the reason it's a news factory is that the residents care." For more information, see the January 6 post below.

Santa Barbara free daily drops Monday

2009-02-03T16:12:00.000-08:00

The Santa Barbara Daily Sound is dropping its Monday edition temporarily due to the economic slowdown. The move comes a little over 18 months after it opened a Saturday edition. So the Sound will operate five-days a week.

"A move of this calibre allows us to avoid layoffs and maintain the same level of content to which our readers and advertisers have become accustomed," said owner Jeramy Gordon. "We can’t just sit around pretending it’s business as usual and hope for a donation. Hard times call for tough decisions and responsible management."

Please note that I corrected this item. I said previously that the Sound's Saturday edition was less than a year old when it is actually a bit over 18 months old.

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

2009-02-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

The Vail (Colorado) Mountaineer printed a photo this week of Mr. Rogers, the late host of the PBS program "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood," in the middle of a front-page editorial about the business practices of the competing Vail Daily. Both are free daily newspapers. The Vail Daily started in the 1980s while the Mountaineer began last summer.

The editorial blasted the Vail Daily for allegedly offering advertisers 90% discounts if they didn't advertise in the Mountaineer. If the advertiser agreed, then they would have to sign a nondisclosure agreement to stop them from talking about the incredible deal they just got. Apparently the Vail Daily was worried those businesses receiving steep discounts might tip off the paper's regular advertisers, who would demand such discounts as well.

However, the editorial made no mention of Mr. Rogers even though his picture was placed in the middle of the page.
Here's the backstory: The current editor of the Vail Daily is Don Rogers who, we're told, bears a resemblance to the TV host.
Guess it's one of those jokes where you had to be there to get it.

Maybe Don Rogers should reply with an editorial welcoming the Vail Mountaineer to the neighborhood.

Anschutz to close Baltimore Examiner

2009-01-29T13:17:00.000-08:00

Conservative billionaire Phil Anschutz (at left) has decided to close his Baltimore Examiner but keep open his other free dailies in San Francisco and Washington. All three are said to be losing money, but Baltimore was losing the most. About 90 people will be fired. The paper's final edition will come out Sunday, February 15.

When he opened the Baltimore Examiner in 2006, Anschutz's managers were convinced that they could build some synergy between it and the company's Washington newspaper. While 50 miles apart, they said the two could share the same printing plant while major advertisers could be convinced to spend money in both papers.

What they didn't understand is that Baltimore and Washington are culturally two very different cities. Washington, dominated by white-collar government workers and defense-industry types, has little in common with blue-collar Baltimore.

Moreover, it is widely assumed that Anschutz, who is active in Republican politics and fundamentalist Christian causes, sees his Washington Examiner as a way to influence policy in the nation's capital. On the other hand, Baltimore was expendable.

The closure of the Baltimore Examiner also shows Anschutz's pockets are not as deep as many had assumed due to his No. 36 ranking on Forbes' list of richest Americans. While 2008 was a bad year for most investors, things were far worse for Anschutz. For instance, he's a major shareholder in the Union Pacific Railroad, which lost 62% of its stock value in 2008 — about twice the percentage the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost during the same period. His stock in Regal Entertainment Group didn't do much better, dropping 43% of its value.

His attempt to establish presence in Hollywood also collapsed last year. The Los Angeles Times reported that Disney bailed out on the "Chronicles of Narnia" franchise that the studio had co-financed and co-produced with Anschutz's Walden Media because Anschutz got too greedy after the astounding success of the first Narnia film, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

As Anschutz's problems in Hollywood and Wall Street were escalating, he quietly put the Baltimore Examiner up for sale.

"Initially, we were optimistic that a qualified buyer could be found because of the strong assets of the newspaper, ranging from a hard working and professional group of employees to a local-centric focus that readers appreciated," Ryan McKibben, CEO of Anschutz's newspaper company Clarity Media, said in a letter to employees obtained by the Baltimore Sun. "We also felt that a buyer would be attracted to the market because the Baltimore Sun faced significant financial challenges. Over the course of three months, we worked with several potential local and national groups in the hopes of effecting a sale. But in the end, the economic dynamics that have ravaged the print media industry also prevented a sale of the Baltimore Examiner."

McKibben, in a different letter sent today to Examiner employees in Washington and San Francisco, said the company planned to keep those papers open and intends to invest in their websites.

"Specifically, we’ve invested in the future of the San Francisco Examiner by making substantial upgrades to your website — including a new design and vastly improved functionality that will be launched at the end of March 2009," McKibben wrote in a letter obtained by the San Francisco Press Club.

The web may be the Examiner's future. It has established a group of unpaid correspondents called "examiners" who are posting stories and columns on Examiner sites set up for every major city in the U.S. McKibben's statement suggests the company's focus going forward is on the Internet.

Free daily planned for Portland, Maine

2009-01-06T22:34:00.000-08:00

Portland, Maine will soon be getting a free daily newspaper.

Mark Guerringue, publisher of the free Conway (N.H.) Daily Sun, said the Portland Daily Sun could start circulating late this month or next, according to a report in the Portland Press Herald.

The Sun's editor will be Curtis Robinson, a veteran of free daily newspapers in Vail and Aspen, Colorado. More recently Robinson was a public affairs professional in Washington, D.C.

In addition to Robinson, the paper will have two reporters. It will publish five days a week. The printing will take place in Conway, which is about 50 miles from Portland as the crow flies.

The Portland Daily Sun will join a growing network of free dailies that began in 1989 with the founding of the Conway Daily Sun. The other papers are the Berlin Daily Sun and Laconia Daily Sun.

In Portland, the Daily Sun will go up against the 147-year-old Press Herald and its Maine Sunday Telegram. They're owned by the Blethen family, better known as the majority owners of the Seattle Times. But the Blethens are negotiating to sell the Portland papers to an investor group that includes former defense secretary and Maine senator William Cohen.

Aspen newspaper eliminates Sunday edition

2009-01-05T22:42:00.000-08:00

With all of the cities struggling to hold on to just one daily newspaper, Aspen, Colorado is unique — this silver mining town cum star-studded ski resort of 5,804 residents supports two separately owned daily newspapers.

The Aspen Times and the Aspen Daily News, both free dailies, have been battling each other for 20 years in the playground that Robert De Niro, Kevin Costner, Jack Nicholson, Antonio Banderas and Kate Hudson call home.

The competition keeps ad rates low and keeps reporters on their toes, worrying that they might be scooped by the other paper. And, after 20 years, one would assume the papers have been profitable, or why would their owners continue to fight for so long?

On December 31, the Times announced that it was eliminating its Sunday edition but would continue to publish the other six days of the week. Publisher Jenna Weatherred, in a note to readers, said Sunday was the paper's "least profitable edition" of the week.

Not un-profitable, but "least profitable."

At the same time, the chain that owns the Times, Swift Newspapers, pulled the plug on weekly newspapers in two other communities as well as a regional Spanish-language paper. And the Times publisher said she has reduced the staff of her paper by 20 percent, though exact numbers weren't given.

"My hope is that, once this recession turns around and things feel more secure in the valley, we will be able to bring back the Sunday daily and our small community weekly papers," Weatherred said.

Each of the papers are tabloid-sized yet have a strikingly grey layout with small headlines and lots of copy. On many inside pages, copy will run for 14 inches without so much as a subhead or pull-quote interrupting the column of grey. The Times appears to have a few more photos sprinkled among its columns.

The staff boxes of the papers show that each has a newsroom of 12 to 15 people. And though Aspen might seem like a small town, they have plenty of news to cover. Last week, for instance, a 71-year-old former miner killed himself after he forced the evacuation of Aspen's downtown when he planted bombs at four banks and a drinking hole in an extortion plot. The incident forced the town to postpone its New Year's Eve fireworks display, a favorite of tourists.

The would-be bomber, as he was preparing his explosives, left a hand-written letter-to-the-editor at the Times reminiscent of another Aspen resident, the late "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Given the frequent controversies and celebrity sightings in Aspen, the attempted bombing probably was just another day at the office for the journalists at the Daily News and Times.

Aspen, a town with a lot of news, is fortunate to have two newspapers to cover it.

Leaving your heart in San Francisco

2008-12-31T10:35:00.000-08:00

Tony Bennett sang about losing one's heart in San Francisco, and the publishers of a free daily in that famed city by the bay may soon feel that way. The (San Francisco) Daily Post announced this week that it is pulling out of San Francisco. The paper moved its offices to Palo Alto, a toney university town about 30 miles south of San Francisco, about six months ago. But they still continued to distribute in San Francisco while they essentially built a new paper in Palo Alto. The publishers know something about the market in Palo Alto. They're Dave Price and Jim Pavelich, who started the Palo Alto Daily News in 1995 and sold it in 2005 to Knight Ridder for $25 million.

An idea for Detroit's newspapers

2008-12-18T03:07:00.000-08:00

Detroit's two newspapers announced Tuesday that they are stopping home delivery four days a week and will only sell a scaled-down version of their papers on those days in racks and stores. (Read the AP story. Photo by the AP.)

The move is a cost-cutting measure as the two papers struggle to survive. "We have to change the way we deliver that news — not just in subtle ways, but in fundamental ways," said David Hunke, Detroit Free Press publisher and chief executive of the partnership with the Detroit News.

If he's serious about fundamental change, he should consider making one or both of the papers free on the days they're not delivered to homes. While the bean counters might be horrified at losing single-copy revenue, those quarters would be replaced with dollars from new advertising. Free papers reach a much broader audience than paid papers. The pass-along rate is higher, meaning advertisers get more bang for their buck. Free papers tend to reach the younger readers advertisers desire.

To prove all of that, make one of the papers free and keep the other paid. Run them with separate management teams. After a year, see which one is ahead, and convert the other to that format.

Ads in free dailies work -- sometimes too well!

2008-12-18T02:39:00.000-08:00

An advertiser in the free daily AMNewYork has been arrested after a scam in the paper was too successful. The New York Post reports:

Rapid turnover in publishers in Vail, Colo.

2008-12-18T02:31:00.000-08:00

It's not often that a newspaper goes through two publishers in one month. But that's what happened this month at the Vail Daily.

Steve Gall, who had headed the paper for 19 months, resigned "to pursue other opportunities," the Vail Daily announced on Dec. 4.

He was replaced by Steve Pope, who was the paper's publisher in 2005 and early 2006 before he was promoted to a regional management job with parent company Swift Newspapers. Then on Tuesday, Pope gave notice so he could take the publisher's job at the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Pope's move to the Colorado Springs' paper is a bit of a head-scratcher because the publisher's slot has been open since August. Why take the Vail job only to quit two weeks later and take the Colorado Springs job instead? Why not take the Colorado Springs job in early December and not bother with Vail?

The official line is that the Colorado Springs job is a big step up for Pope. But we hear that the Vail Daily isn't a fun place to work anymore compared to the first time he was publisher. The founder of the Vail Daily, Jim Pavelich, who sold the paper in the early 1990s to Swift, has started a new paper, the Vail Mountaineer, which is taking away business from the Daily. The Vail Daily has responded by offering advertisers steep discounts — as much as 90 percent — if they agree not to advertise in the new paper. But the strategy may backfire because Swift loses money on the discounted rates.

By the way, at the Gazette Pope will succeed Scott McKibben, who was the publisher of the San Francisco Examiner when it was purchased by billionaire oilman Phil Anschutz.

Metro U.S. did better in 2008 than 2007

2008-12-18T02:18:00.000-08:00

Has Metro finally found the right formula for U.S. audiences? This year the paper has had a successful redesign and appears to be attracting more mainstream advertisers — major department stores instead of fly-by-night 1-800 ads. Metro is growing its real estate sections at a time when real estate isn't supposed to be doing that well. And Metro seems to have more ads than in the past and probably a higher yield per page.

"Metro U.S.'s performance in 2008 is very promising and has improved a lot compared to 2007," Metro chief executive Per Mikael Jensen (right) told Free-Daily.com in an e-mail Wednesday. "We really feel that we are embraced by readers and advertisers.

"So whilst everyone else seems to have a hard time, we have seen big improvements," Jensen wrote. "Our base of advertisers and our yield per page has, as you point out, been increasing during the year."

A year ago, there was talk that Metro was going to close or sell its three U.S. editions (New York, Philadephia and Boston). Jensen put the papers on the market, but there were no takers. Of course the financial meltdown has halted all lending for mergers and acquisitions, so even if somebody was interested, they couldn't get the financing.

Now Jensen tells us, "I’m very sure that Metro has a great future in U.S."

Personnel changes at several free dailies

2008-12-16T01:11:00.000-08:00

Metro, the international chain of free dailies, announced yesterday that it has named Tony Metcalf as its Editor in Chief for Metro U.S., overseeing editions in Boston, Philadelphia and New York.

The announcement formalizes the role Metcalf has had since February, when he was asked to temporarily head up the chain's newsrooms after Metro cut 27 positions. Metcalf was planning to return to the Middle East, where he had worked as a editor and publisher, when he was tapped for the temporary job.

Metro's decision to give Metcalf the title of U.S. editor is an indication that the chain plans to keep open its U.S. papers. The three had been on the block earlier this year, but no buyers emerged.

Prior to Metro, Metcalf served for four years as the owner and editorial director of "7 days" in Dubai. Previous to that, he was Global Editor in Chief for Metro International, overseeing the launch of Metro World News, a newswire utilizing Metro's reporters in cities around the world. Metcalf has been involved in launches of Metro around the world including Boston, Toronto, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Hong Kong and Seoul.

"Metcalf's global media background, coupled with his localized experience, makes him perfect to helm Metro US," said Georg Tsaros, managing director and publisher of Metro New York. "Metcalf is ideal to unlock the vast editorial potential of Metro in the United States."

OTHER PERSONNEL CHANGES

Amanda Barrett, who has been promoted by the AP to be its deputy editor for the Eastern U.S. Regional Desk in Philadelphia. She arrived at AP last year from amNewYork. She was the free paper's Web site editor.

In California, two big changes at the Tahoe Daily Tribune, the free daily based in South Lake Tahoe owned by Swift Newspaper. Mary Jurkonis has been appointed publisher. She most recently served as publisher of the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza in Incline Village. Jurkonis succeeds Gail Powell-Acosta.

Also at the Tahoe paper, city editor Elaine Goodman has been promoted to managing editor. Before joining the Tribune in November 2004, she worked for the Reno Gazette-Journal and the Palo Alto Daily News, another free daily.

Legislation proposed over delivery method

2008-12-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

A city councilman in Alexandria, Virginia wants to create a "do not deliver" list, similar to "do not call" lists for phone solicitors, designed to curtail unwanted deliveries of the Washington Examiner that have been piling up on driveways and lawns. WJLA-TV in Washington reports that councilman Justin Wilson's "do not deliver" law would include fines against newspaper publishers who continue to deliver despite requests from residents who ask the paper to stop.

WJLA interviewed one resident, Amy Bayer, who said that when she has called, deliveries would stop for a few months, and then start again later. Another resident interviewed by the TV station pointed out that when unwanted newspapers accumulate, they tip off would-be burglars that nobody's home.

Earlier this year a Maryland legislator, Tanya Shewell, proposed similar legislation but was talked out of it by the Examiner, which promised to do a better job. The Examiner also faced the threat of such legislation in San Francisco earlier this year. But the Examiner has since reduced delivery to homes from six days a week to two as a cost-cutting measure. The cut-back appears to have taken some of the steam out of a "do-not-deliver" list in Frisco, though the complaints keep coming.

SPEAKING ABOUT THE EXAMINER, the company has announced that it is closing its printing plant in Maryland that had printed its Washington and Baltimore editions, and will outsource the work to other printing companies. The move will allow the Examiner to shed 101 jobs from its payroll. The Examiner says the move will allow it to print more color ads.

Wyoming free daily turns 30

2008-12-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

When the Jackson Hole Daily began Dec. 1, 1978, it was probably the smallest daily newspaper around in at least two ways.

The initial press run was just 2,000 copies for a winter resort that was essentially closed until the ski season started later in December. And the actual size of the paper was unique too -- not a tabloid, but half the dimensions of a tabloid, what printers call a "quarter fold."

In a story about the paper's anniversary, writer Angus M. Thuermer Jr. notes that the pressman waited all night for the small newsroom to finish the first edition. He fell asleep in the newspaper's conference room.

The press finally started at around 5 or 6 in the morning -- even though the idea was to print it the night before. The delivery person couldn't wait any longer and left for another job, which meant the editor and a sleepy salesman had to distribute the first issue on their own.

Thuermer's article continues:

At the time there were only two other free dailies -- The Colorado Daily in Boulder, born in 1971, and the Aspen Daily News, which began five months before Jackson Hole.

Metro Canada 'facing real challenges'

2008-11-30T23:17:00.000-08:00

Metro Canada is apparently "reorganizing," laying off employees and facing "real challenges," the publisher of the Metro's Halifax edition is quoted as saying. Greg Lutes made the comments to his competitor, the Halifax Chronicle Herald, in a story about four layoffs at Metro Halifax on Wednesday. Lutes said two reporters, one sales staffer and one marketing person were let go. Lutes said the cuts were apart of the re-organization of Metro Canada, which announced a couple of months ago that its Canadian circulation had reached one million, strengthening its position as the No. 1 free daily in the country.

Lutes said, "Local (advertising) is not the issue ... It's national (advertising) ... We're facing real challenges right now."

Lutes said circulation at his paper had increased 20 percent this fall.

The Metro Halifax edition now has five people working in its newsroom. Lutes said he felt confident that there would not be any additional layoffs at the Halifax edition.

Youth-oriented, 5-day free paper to close

2008-11-28T23:42:00.000-08:00

Link, a five-day free daily in Norfolk, Va., that aimed for the 18-to-34 demo, will print its final edition Dec. 19. Its staff of around 15 to 20 will lose their jobs. The paper was shuttered as part of a round of layoffs and buyouts to hit Virginian-Pilot Media Companies.

Link, begun in October 2006, had received positive reviews and met financial projections, which predicted it would turn profitable by 2010, according to the Virginian-Pilot. But Publisher Maurice Jones said "we, as a company, cannot afford to withstand those losses in the next couple of years in this climate."

Jones said it is possible that Link's Web site will be kept alive.

Head-to-head competition claims a free daily

2008-11-07T00:56:00.000-08:00

A locally-owned free daily serving Eureka, California will print its last edition on Saturday after battling for five years with the town's chain-owned paid daily, according to The Associated Press.

Eureka, a town of about 27,000, is in far Northern California near the Oregon border. It overlooks the Pacific Ocean coast.

The Eureka Reporter was started by a local developer and banker, Rob Arkley, a conservative who felt the town's longtime paid daily, the Times-Standard, was too liberal.

The Times-Standard is owned by MediaNews Group, a chain of 57 dailies headed by Dean Singleton, who was a big backer of President Bush. Yet Singleton's papers are mostly liberal. Singleton doesn't tell his editors to slant the news.

And, oddly enough, Arkley didn't attempt to tell the journalists who worked for the Reporter how to cover the news either. The only hint of conservatism in the Reporter came on the editorial page.

Arkley's Eureka Reporter scooped up numerous awards. It also has a state-of-the-art press that produced vidid photos and ads.

Probably the smartest thing Arkley did was hire Judi Pollace, a highly respected veteran of the Times-Standard who produced a credible product. I understand that Judy was also an attendee at the 2007 small daily conference in Florida. (She is seen here in a photo that appeared in a 2006 San Francisco Chronicle article about the Eureka newspaper battle. The photo at top, showing a billboard on Highway 101 between Arcata and Eureka, is also from that story. Both were shot by Chris Stewart.)

As the U.S. economy hit tough times this year, Singleton went after the competition with a couple of lawsuits over economic matters. The first concerned legal ads and whether the Eureka Reporter fit the narrow criteria to publish them. A local court agreed with the Reporter, but an appeals court did not — and the Reporter lost all of its revenue from legal ads.

Singleton's second lawsuit alleged that Arkley was selling ads in the Eureka Reporter at a loss in order to take business away from the Times-Standard.

A few weeks ago, Arkley called Singleton and said, "It was time to do something," according to a Times-Standard story. Arkley searched for a new buyer for his paper, Singleton said, but found none.

Singleton said the ad-pricing suit is now moot and he has agreed to allow Arkley to provide editorial pages to the Times-Standard twice a week.

The Times-Standard quoted a local assistant journalism professor, Marcy Burstiner, who said she's never heard of an agreement like the freshly formed one between the two Eureka papers, where one newspaper agrees to run another's editorials. While the agreement will preserve the Reporter's voice, Burstiner said she's not sure it's worth saving.

”It was a crazy editorial voice,” she said. “It was actually a very interesting paper, but their editorials were crazy. Personally I don't think that editorial voice reflected that of the Eureka community.”

The Times-Standard story on the closing of its rival ended with this:

Plug pulled on Washington state free daily

2008-11-03T12:30:00.000-08:00

David Black of Sound Publishing has pulled the plug on the 10,600-circulation Kitsap Free Daily serving Kitsap County on Puget Sound, west of Seattle.

“We are temporarily suspending publication of the Free Daily to focus on our core products in Kitsap County,” says Lori Maxim, Vice President of West Sound Newspaper Operations. “The Daily is a fantastic product but we have decided to shift our focus to continued development of our online products and the community newspapers serving the Kitsap region.” Sound Publishing has six weeklies in the Kitsap area.

Here's a link to the announcement.

Black (no relation o Canadian-born British former media mogul Conrad Black) also group of 17 free dailies in British Columbia. The average circulation is 4,818 with the largest being the Victoria and Nanaimo editions at 10,000 each. Here's a profile free-daily.com did of him last month.

RedEye gives McCain a black eye

2008-11-01T01:06:00.000-07:00

RedEye, the Chicago Tribune's free daily, ran an ad on page 2 the on Wednesday with a pie chart that used a lot of ink. That pie chart gave John McCain a black eye when the page was held up to the light (right). Certainly the black eye was unintentional, but it might be hard to explain to Republicans after the Tribune's endorsement of Barack Obama a few days earlier. Credit for spotting this item goes to the local Chicago site Gapersblock.com.

It's all about advertising

2008-11-01T01:05:00.000-07:00

COMMENTARYOne of the reasons why free daily newspapers have so much potential is that they're free. And if they're distributed widely, they can reach many more people than a paid newspaper.

Readers who are 40 and younger likely didn't grow up in homes that subscribed to newspapers. They're not accustomed to paying for a paper -- particularly if they have been getting news from the Internet and TV. Older readers, when exposed to a free paper carrying a lot of local news, will search for that paper again and again. And free papers have higher pass-along rates, meaning more people read each copy than a paid paper. Free papers capture the interest of the casual reader who long ago stopped reading paid papers (or never started).

Ultimately free makes the advertiser's buck go farther and puts ads in front of people who wouldn't normally pick up a paid newspaper.

Free can be a fantastic business model.

But that's not the opinion of Morris Communications, which has decided to flip its Bluffton (S.C.) Today, a 17,000-circulation free daily near Hilton Head, S.C., from free to paid (25 cents daily, 75 cents on Sunday) beginning Dec. 1. Bluffton Today was started by Morris three years ago as an experiment. Morris, by switching from free to paid, has essentially said the experiment is over.

Publisher Tim Anderson wrote:

Anderson says his ad revenues are declining. How much more will those revenues decline when advertisers discover their ads are less effective than before? What will an advertiser who regularly runs a coupon think when he only gets 10 coupons a month compared to 50 when the paper was free?

Signs of improvement at Metro U.S.

2008-11-01T01:01:00.000-07:00

COMMENTARYThe Web site MediaLifemagazine.com posted a story Thursday headlined "For Metro, the future looks doubtful."

I can't argue with the headline. Metro's three U.S. papers, in Philadelphia, Boston and New York, are apparently losing money and have been on the block since January with no takers. Of course merger and acquisition activity is at a standstill due to the credit crisis. That's not Metro's fault. And the U.S. is in the midst of a recession.

We also can't quibble with the statement that the three papers need capital to remain open. It's expensive to print papers with daily press runs of (and these figures are about a year old, but the most reliable I have at hand) 300,000 in New York, 187,000 in Boston and 140,000 in Philly. Printing costs for the three combined are likely over $1 million a month. The last I heard, the three papers have a combined head count of 120. I have no guess on payroll.

But we looked at a few recent issues of Metro and were impressed by several things:

While Metro is having money problems, it is putting out a better product than we've seen before. It is producing a newspaper that should be attracting readers and advertisers — which may help Metro ride out this economic downturn.

An overlooked baron of free dailies

2008-10-10T22:36:00.000-07:00

Reports about the free daily newspaper industry usually overlook one of its most successful publishers, David Black of Victoria, British Columbia (not related to Canadian-born British former media mogul Conrad Black).

One reason is geography — the financial media and those who cover newspapers are on the East Coast while Black's empire is in western Canada. Another reason is that his company, Black Press, is privately held, so it doesn't furnish quarterly earnings reports, which would put the company on the radar screen of those who cover the newspaper industry.

But do some digging and you'll find Black Press owns 170 newspapers in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and Ohio. They include the Akron Beacon Journal and Honolulu Star-Bulletin. But the majority of his publications are small, profitable community newspapers.

Black's newspapers have state-of-the-art websites, but he's making money with print.

"I'm bullish on newspapers, especially community newspapers,'' Black told Bloomberg News. "I think they are a really solid business.''

Most of Black's community papers are weeklies, but he has two interesting free daily operations:

six weeklies

17 free dailies

Most of the stories in the 17 papers are the same except for a few local reports. However, the zoning allows each community to have its own nameplate and gives local advertisers the ability to just advertise in one edition if they choose (see rate card). Similar to the situation in Kitsap, Black owns weeklies in the towns where he has free dailies, so advertisers in the weeklies are often upsold into the free daily. Because of this arrangement, Black was able to say that the papers were immediately profitable soon after he started them in 2005.

Black told the Globe & Mail newspaper in 2005 that the key to making these newspapers succeed is keeping costs low and distributing them efficiently, where people gather. His free dailies also challenge the notion that free dailies can only survive in large cities with mass transit systems.

To read more about David Black, see this profile by the Seattle Weekly in July. The photo of Black is from the Seattle Times.

Paper's redesign copies competitor

2008-10-09T23:48:00.000-07:00

A curious thing has happened in San Francisco. One free daily appears to have redesigned its front page nameplate to look a lot like its competitor.

Above is The City Star, a free daily the Examiner started two years ago in an attempt to kill off an independent free daily, the Daily Post. Apparently the Examiner, owned by billionaire oilman Phil Anschutz, didn't want another free daily in town. Recently the City Star has changed its front page design. See below.

The nameplate is now four-inches wide, just like the Daily Post. The Star now has teases to the left of its nameplate and an ad on the right, just like the Daily Post. And, the Star has a column of national news briefs, just like the Daily Post.

But in the two years since the Star and Post have been going head to head, the Star still hasn't picked up much advertising. It's typical issue is 16 pages, while the Post is running between 24 and 44 pages a day.

Canada's '24 hours' puts copy on the cover

2008-10-07T10:33:00.000-07:00

Since the beginning of tabloid-sized newspapers, editors have debated whether to put news copy on the cover or put large headlines and photographs.

New York's Post and Daily News are famous for screaming headlines and bold photos that attempt to sell the reader on a major story that starts inside. Today's most successful urban free dailies, amNewYork and Chicago's RedEye, have magazine-like covers, emphasizing one story with a single photo, with a couple of teases.

But community free dailies have taken a different approach, putting as many as four stories on the front with text, like a smaller-sized traditional broadsheet. Examples include the Conway (N.H.) Daily Sun, Denver Daily News, Aspen (Colo.) Times, Aspen Daily News, Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily News and Santa Monica (Calif.) Daily Press.

After considerable research, the Canada's chain of "24 hours" free dailies has switched from the magazine-cover format to one with two stories that have text. It's really a hybrid of the two styles since there still is a large photo that promotes a story inside along with teases along the top.

24 hours -- with editions in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver -- calls the format "hi-speed news."

"Insights from our readers, prospective readers, advertisers and ad agencies set the course for the redesign," said Chris Brockbank, vice president of marketing at 24 hours parent Sun Media. "Essentially they want sharp and fast headline news and a consistent, quick navigation system to get to content they want.

"We've put the emphasis squarely on those characteristics in this first step of our program to introduce improvements driven by research," Brockbank said.

Arizona free daily cuts back to 4 days a week

2008-10-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

In suburban Phoenix, the 102,000-circulation East Valley Tribune is switching to a 4-day-a-week publication schedule, eliminating 142 jobs including that of its executive editor Jim Ripley, and ending distribution and coverage in two cities, Scottsdale and Tempe.

The changes are dramatic for the paper that switched from paid to free distribution (with paid subscriptions) last year. Management is blaming the downturn in advertising but also said its parent company, Irvine, Calif.-based Freedom Communications, has not been able to trim costs fast enough to offset that drop despite three rounds of layoffs.

The changes will take place in early January, and those losing their jobs are getting three months notice.

"The new print edition will have two sections — one for local news and a second for sports, entertainment and late-breaking news. Both sections will be tabloid-sized, and the front page of the newspaper will look similar to its current layout. Zoned editions are planned for each of the four communities," said an announcement posted Monday night on the paper's website.

Examiner endorsement triggers firestorm

2008-09-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

It shouldn't come as a surprise that billionaire Phil Anschutz's three Examiner newspapers (San Francisco, Washington and Baltimore) would support the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin. But Thursday's front-page endorsement enraged readers in far-left San Francisco.

The SF Weekly reported:

Valleywag.com, a tech industry gossip site, also took note of the unusual front-page endorsement, calling it "clumsy and pointless."

Under the heading "Great moments in journalism," Valleyway opined:

"Anschutz is a billionaire Republican and a devout Christian, but up until now he's proven more interested in making money in a post-Craigslist local ad market than in trying to save San Francisco from pot-smoking gay abortionists. That's why today's cover, which endorses the GOP's John McCain and Sarah Palin ticket the day after McCain's "huh-what?" suspension of his campaign, seems to be a classic case of election emotions spun out of control ... Is anyone going to change their vote because of the paper?"

New editor for Chicago's RedEye

2008-09-27T15:03:00.000-07:00

Tran Ha, who started as a copy editor at the Chicago Tribune's RedEye five years ago, has been named editor of that free daily, succeeding Jane Hirt, who was promoted to managing editor of the Tribune last month. Ha, 30, started at RedEye and then became an editor on the Tribune's feature desk. Last year, she returned to RedEye to launch its Saturday edition. Earlier this year, she became editor of TheMash, a new Chicago Tribune paper produced for and in collaboration with Chicago public high school students.

Dallas free daily to become a weekly

2008-09-26T14:51:00.000-07:00

The Dallas Morning News says it plans to convert its free daily Quick to a weekly and shift its focus from news to entertainment effective Oct. 30.

News of the switch, which has been rumored for months, comes a month after the Morning News began delivering another quick-read daily, Briefing, to about 200,000 homes that do not subscribe to the Morning News. Briefing appears Wednesdays through Sundays and picks up many of the ads in the Morning News. Briefing allows the Morning News to say that it reaches more homes than before.

In its new form, Quick will be delivered door-to-door to young adults in apartment complexes, with the other half distributed in rack locations in entertainment districts and retail venues. The Morning News says it will increase its circulation from 95,000 to 100,000.

The Dallas Morning News launched Quick on Nov. 10, 2003 in an attempt to head off another free daily planned in Dallas, the A.M. Journal Express. The Journal Express lasted six months.

"The b" pushes limits with "Douchebag" cover

2008-09-20T20:27:00.000-07:00

The b, a free daily published by the Tribune Company's Baltimore Sun, raised a few eyebrows this week with its cover headline "Douchebag!"

The article described the qualities of such a person — "You talk about 'Lost' as if it were "The Grapes of Wrath,'" "You pretend you know how to swirl and sniff wine" and "You're a Yankees fan." It was highly subjective but a lot of fun for the 18-34 demo The b is hoping to reach.

Over at the b's mother newspaper, The Sun, a number of staffers complained to Anne Tallent, the editor of the b, and to Tim Ryan, the publisher of Sun Media Group, according to the blog of Sun copy editor and Loyola College instructor John E. McIntyre.

"Ms. Tallent responded that her readers are of a different sensibility than the readers of The Sun and are not inclined to find the word objectionable," McIntyre wrote. "She did not suggest that the members of The Sun’s staff are a bunch of dusty old fogies, but I fear that some of my colleagues may have drawn an inference."

McIntyre noted that his students don't have a problem with the words "sucks" or "scumbag," even though the latter term originally referred to a condom. But they told him that they would not have used "douchebag" in a headline.

Good news, bad news for Examiner

2008-09-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

Baltimore's alt-weekly, The City Paper, has picked that city's version of The Examiner as the best local newspaper.

"The Examiner may not have some of the stuff the [Baltimore] Sun has — the Pulitzers, the fancy new redesign, the insights of 'innovation' expert Lee Abrams — but it does have what we want: Local news. Lots of it. Covered in a straightforward, diligent fashion. Which is why, more and more often, it's the paper we turn to when we want to know what's going on in and around town," said The City Paper.

As for the bad news, the San Francisco Examiner is having financial problems. The San Francisco Press Club blog reports that the Examiner has laid off production and sales employees in the last month, and not replaced other employees who left the newspaper. The exact number isn't known.

Spanish-language free daily starts in Boston

2008-09-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

A successful free Spanish weekly newspaper in the Boston area, "Siglo 21" (translation: 21st Century), became a free daily on Monday, Sept. 15, to coincide with Spanish Heritage Month.

"We see a need to reach the larger Hispanic community in the area with a daily," Siglo 21 owner Victor Manuel Gonzalez Lemus told the Boston Globe. (Photo by Erik Jacobs for the Boston Globe.)

This week, Siglo21 will start a promotional blitz on local Spanish television and radio to promote the new daily.

Siglo21 is currently distributed in newspaper boxes, restaurants and mom-and-pop businesses. Lemus said he plans to have more newsstands in apartment complexes in Lawrence, Lowell, Andover, and Salem, N.H.

To publish several times a week, Lemus told the Globe will boost his staff of 22 with more reporters. To keep costs down, he plans to publish only 5,000 copies on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. On Thursdays, the run increases to 10,000 and will be distributed throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.

Metro launches new editorial strategy in Canada

2008-09-15T03:18:00.000-07:00

It's encouraging to hear that a publisher is spending money to improve the quality of news in a newspaper. That appears to be exactly what Metro Canada is doing in appointing Dianne Rinehart as its new editor-in-chief for English Canada. The veteran journalist's work has appeared in the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette, Winnipeg Free Press, Calgary Herald and Vancouver Sun.

Her plan at Metro is to "out-report, out-design, out-delight, out-service and out-deliver the competition in the paper - and on the web."

According to Media in Canada, Reinhart plans to:

The last bullet point may be the most important. People like local news. Reducing coverage from those outposts would be suicide for Metro.

'Otis' says LA launch delayed until January

2008-09-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

We're almost afraid to pass this information along because it might be a hoax. So don't make any life-changing decisions based on what you're about to read.

As we mentioned below, we e-mailed the person who posted a Craigslist ad seeking staffers for a new free daily in Los Angeles. Since then, we've been carrying on an e-mail conversation with a person using the name of the late LA Times publisher Otis Chandler (pictured).

Otis tells us that the new paper has signed a distribution deal, but that the launch has been delayed from November to January.

"The launch week editions are set to be 64 pages each split into three sections all on 34# hi-brite paper all in four color process," Otis writes.

According to the paper's Web site, the initial circulation will be between 200,000 and 350,000, Monday-Friday, with no Saturday edition. But there will be a Sunday edition which will be available nationally.

Otis says that the new paper is negotiating to buy a "Los Angeles-based publication that will become the cornerstone of the new paper ... so in effect our original plans of a start-up have morphed into a re-launch." Otis says the acquisition target isn't a daily.

He says they're buying the publication for its advertising base.

Q: Distributing throughout LA seems impossible or at least a huge headache. Are you focusing on some areas more than others? If so, which ones?

Otis: The actual city limits are our geographic focus. We've secured distribution at 0.03 per copy.

Q: Will this look like RedEye Chicago? tbt* Tampa Bay? amNewYork? Metro?

Otis: We won't look like anything you've seen before in a daily newspaper.

Q: Will you have a general news focus, or will you cover more closely the entertainment industry? The legal industry? Some other industry?

Otis: Hard news mainly in the form of columns, heavy entertainment coverage.

One more thing -- Otis says Phil Anschutz, the billionaire owner of the Examiner chain, isn't involved in this start-up.

Again, we have no idea whether this information is accurate. This may just be a scam. Choosing Otis Chandler's name is, of course, significant. Chandler, publisher from 1960 to 1980, built the LA Times into one of the nation's great newspapers. David Halberstam, in his 1979 book "The Powers That Be," wrote: "No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly on so grand a scale, took a paper that was marginal in qualities and brought it to excellence as Otis Chandler did."

In the 1980s, Chandler turned the paper and its parent company, Times Mirror, over to people outside his family, a decision he would regret. The New York Times wrote in Chandler's obituary: "In retirement, Mr. Chandler lashed out at the Times's managers during a 1999 scandal that erupted over revelations that they had secretly entered a deal to devote an edition of the newspaper's Sunday magazine to the Staples Center, a new indoor sports stadium in Los Angeles, in exchange for hefty ad revenues. In a public letter to Times employees, Mr. Chandler warned that management's 'unbelievably stupid and unprofessional' behavior risked destroying the newspaper's reputation as one of the giants of American journalism."

Whether this Otis Chandler exists is a mystery that probably won't be cleared up until January, at the earliest. As for the idea of starting a free daily in L.A., given the success of free dailies like amNewYork and Chicago's RedEye, why not?

Clues emerge about LA project

2008-08-28T07:15:00.000-07:00

Is LA getting a new paper called The Free Daily? We have no idea whether the following information is on the up-and-up or whether we're being hoaxed. But with that warning, we'll pass it along.

We e-mailed the person who posted a Craigslist ad about starting a new free daily in Los Angeles. A person using the name of LA Times Publisher Otis Chandler (1927-2006) responded:

We will make as much of our plan known as possible on September 2nd. Some of the key members of our team were involved with other groups in the Los Angeles market that prevented them from working on competing projects until 9/1/08. The first issues of TFD [The Free Daily] will likely not hit the streets until January 2009, we had originally planned a November 2008 launch...right now we are negotiating to buy a Los Angeles-based publication that will become the cornerstone of the new paper...so in effect our original plans of a start-up have morphed into a re-launch.Sounds like somebody ought to contact Dean Singleton, the largest owner of soon-to-be-abandoned paid dailies in Southern California, to see if he is talking to these guys.

Will this 'hirt' RedEye?

2008-08-26T11:28:00.001-07:00

Jane Hirt, the editor behind the highly successful free daily RedEye, has been promoted by Tribune Co. to managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. Her tenure at RedEye dates back to when it was a paid newspaper, and the Tribune Co. was trying to figure out where it fit in Chicagoland publishing scene. RedEye, with Hirt at the helm, found its own way with distinctive and relevant features that made it a hit with the 18-to-34 crowd. No replacement has been named. Here's an interview we did with her in 2007.

RedEye tweaks design, trims 1.5 inches

2008-08-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

COMMENTARY: The "R" in RedEye has gone from uppercase to lower case on the cover of the Chicago Tribune's youthful free daily. The paper itself is 1 1/2 inches shorter than before. And the headline font has been changed to Stag Sans.

But the changes appear to be mere tweaks to a very popular and successful newspaper. The reduction in size makes the paper easier to hold, which is a plus for readers who use public transportation. The fonts improve what was already a strong design package. The content of RedEye hasn't changed, and that's a good thing. Lots of short, snappy stories -- blurbs really -- that move a reader through the paper quickly.

For instance, the Aug. 11 issue (at right) served up stories about the dangers of driving while using the phone, why e-mail is making a mess of our lives, reader reviews of Chicago's newest bars and heavy coverage of Olympic phenom Michael Phelps.

They're the kind of stories you'd be apt to talk about over the watercooler.

Plus RedEye has celebrity coverage — in this issue, Bernie Mac's death and a RedEye interview with Jessica Simpson. But it's not all fluff — RedEye carries a full page of national and international news, and another full page of Chicagoland news.

EXAMINER REDESIGN: The Examiner papers have also improved their look with a redesign. Gone are the cluttered covers with multiple headlines, all about the same size in serif type faces. Now the Examiner cover consists of one photo, one major headline, and some teases. The inside pages look brighter with the new headline font and the addition of more white space. On Sundays, the cover features an illustration of a person being profiled by the Examiner. The content of the Examiner hasn't changed. You can still find "news" stories written by right-wing commentators like Bill Sammon and editorials more extreme than anything Rush Limbaugh has had to say, but as far as the design is concerned, it's better.

New editors, publishers in Colorado

2008-08-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

Swift Newspapers, owner of several free dailies in Colorado, announced today that it has appointed Valerie Smith as the publisher of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. She will replace Jim Hyatt, who became publisher in May and now has left the company, according to the rival Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. Smith has worked for Swift since 1993 and was publisher of its Glenwood Springs Post Independent and associate publisher of its Vail Daily.

Speaking about the Vail Daily, it has a new editor — its old editor, Don Rogers. Rogers left the Vail paper last year to head up another Swift paper, the Record-Courier in Gardnerville, Nev. But he's back in Vail, possibly because the Vail Daily is facing new competition in the form of the Vail Mountaineer, a free daily started by the founder of the Vail Daily, Jim Pavelich. Pavelich sold the Vail Daily in 1993 and decided to start publishing again because he didn't like the way his old paper was covering the news. Rogers, who was editor in Vail from 1999 to 2007, also said there was another reason for returning to Vail. He said his family had not yet moved to Nevada, and that he was returning often to visit with them. "I got the chance to experience the Daily more as a regular reader, and I think that gave me valuable insights that I would not have from the inside. And working in a new place has given me fresh perspective," he said in a Vail Daily article.

Rogers will replace Alex Miller, who is moving to Summit County to be the editor of the Summit Daily News. It's also a Swift paper.

In Boulder, the Colorado Daily — the oldest free daily in the U.S. — has a new editor. Matt Sebastian was previously city editor of Boulder's paid paper, the Daily Camera. In the past, the Colorado Daily and Daily Camera were rivals, but today they're owned by the same company (Prairie Mountain Publishing, a joint venture with Denver-based MediaNews Group, publisher of the Denver Post) and operate out of the same building. "The two papers operate independent newsrooms but share some content, with editors at each publication selecting the stories that best suits their readership," said a story in the Camera announcing Sebastian's appointment.

California city removes free paper's racks

2008-08-20T15:52:00.000-07:00

In the 1960s, the free speech movement's heart and soul was in San Francisco and surrounding Bay Area communities like Berkeley.

Things have changed, however. On Aug. 13th, the city of Palo Alto hauled away 27 newsracks of a new free daily newspaper, the Daily Post. The city contends the newspaper violated its 1998 newsrack ordinance, which apparently limits the number of spaces newspapers can have in Palo Alto's downtown area.

Palo Alto's downtown is dominated by University Avenue, a Rodeo Drive-like shopping destination.

The city regulates the newsracks in the area and forces them to use modular boxes. But when the Post asked for spaces in these racks, the city dragged its feet. So the paper's publishers, Jim Pavelich and Dave Price (who started the Palo Alto Daily News in 1995 and sold it for $25 million to Knight Ridder in 2005), decided to put free-standing racks throughout the downtown area in defiance of the ordinance -- or at least until the city could give them spaces.

The city might have even looked the other way until it fixed its ordinane except for the phone calls it got from the politically connected publisher of a weekly newspaper — Palo Alto's mayor is a lawyer whose firm represents the weekly — who demanded the removal of the Post's racks.

In a horrendous move, city workers grabbed the Post's newsracks off the streets and put them into a flatbed truck.

Within hours, however, the Post put racks back on the street. But this time Editor and Co-Publisher Dave Price vowed that if the city touched the racks again, they would have to arrest him first and throw him in jail.

He even posed for this photo on top of a space where one of his racks was removed, but other free-standing racks were allowed to stay. The incident blew up into a major controversy and a day later, the city offered the Post roughly the same number of racks as its competitors. The Post printed a story on Monday, Aug. 18, saying the controversy was over.

Somebody is having fun in LA

2008-08-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

Are there plans to start a free daily in Los Angeles? After all, it is the last of the three major markets without one. A classified ad on Craigslist (now withdrawn) has been followed by this Web site at www.thefreedaily.com/Home_Page.html.

Our first reaction? Guess you've heard of clip art photos!

Here's the text of the site:

We are going to launch a FREE daily newspaper here in Los Angeles. We will also be developing a companion website. The initial circulation will be between 200,000 and 350,000 daily M-F, no Saturday edition and a 500,000 circulation Sunday edition which will be available nationally. Hey, that sounds like billionaire oilman Phil Anschutz's plans in San Francisco, Baltimore and Washington. Only problem is that his business model hasn't worked. It failed so miserably that he just slashed his circulation by 40 percent after struggling for three years to make his papers work.

It will be distributed free of charge throughout the Los Angeles market through alliances with key retailers and vendor box distribution.LA is the nation's biggest market geographically. Unless you're the LA Times, you won't be able to pull that off.

We are looking for writers, web developers, photographers, editors (who can write), designers and seasoned sales professionals. If you have experience here in LA we know who you are, if you do not but are looking to break in, fine.

We've secured office space in the heart of the city.

Guess that means you've got a lease.

We've sent a couple of e-mails to those purporting to start a free daily in Los Angeles. No answer.

LA Observed says that one of the writers leaving the LA Times responded to the new paper's Craigslist ad and asked "who are you?" She got back this reply:

The Web site for this supposed newspaper says management will "reach out to interested parties" before Labor Day.

Free daily apparently planned in L.A.

2008-07-31T11:19:00.000-07:00

With the Los Angeles Times shedding staff and cutting back coverage, this could be a good time to start a free daily in Los Angeles. Here's an ad that popped up on Craigslist. We're trying to find out who placed it. If you have any information, our e-mail address is free-daily@hotmail.com.

NEW FREE DAILY NEWSPAPER LAUNCHING - in search of leadership team (Mid Wilshire)

Quick in Dallas switches to weekly

2008-07-31T11:05:00.000-07:00

A.H. Belo Corp. plans to lay off 14 percent of the staff of the Dallas Morning News and convert its 100,000 circulation free daily, Quick, into a weekly. Belo says its total sales are off 21 percent this year which includes a 12 percent drop in online sales. It hopes to cut $50 million company-wide.

Quick will now focus more intensely focus on the entertainment interests of young single adults and drop much of the hard news coverage the paper was providing.

The move comes as the Dallas Morning News is about to start a free 16-page broadsheet newspaper called Briefing that is being thrown on the driveways of non-subscribers in high-income areas. When Briefing was announced, rumors about the fate of Quick began swirling. Just this week, the start date of Briefing was changed from Aug. 22 to Aug. 27.

The Dallas Morning News launched Quick on Nov. 10, 2003 in an attempt to head off another free daily planned in Dallas, the A.M. Journal Express. The Journal Express lasted six months. In the four-and-a-half years since then, Quick apparently wasn't able to become a strong enough asset that it could escape the budget ax.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this posting said Briefing had already started, which is incorrect.

Metro interested in U.S. network of papers

2008-07-25T03:17:00.000-07:00

The chief executive of Metro International, Per Mikael Jensen (pictured), says he's interested in forming a network with other U.S. free daily publishers to attract national ad dollars. He told free-daily.com in an e-mail:

Are you listening RedEye? tbt*? Examiner? Dallas Quick?

And I would be very happy to create the network together with the local players, which in return means that they could maintain their local strength but adding new revenue.Are you listening Palo Alto, Conway, Vail, Denver, San Mateo, Santa Monica, etc.?

It is almost as if he is laying down the gauntlet! It's time everybody who is in the free daily business, or wants to be, discuss this.

A few thoughts of my own:

1. Metro is now in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Tribune has free dailies in Chicago and Baltimore. The Examiner is in San Francisco, Baltimore and Washington. Belo has one in Dallas. Denver has a strong independent. Freedom newspapers has one in suburban Phoenix. Poynter has one in St. Pete, Fla. And there's a gaggle of free dailies in the San Francisco Bay Area and another gaggle in the Colorado Rockies (Vail, Aspen, etc.). There's a free daily network right now if everybody wants to cooperate.

2. Don't be fooled by the doom and gloom reporting about our economy. Smart investors buy low and sell high. Now's the time for free dailies to invest and prepare for a boom ahead.

3. Paid dailies will soon die, but that doesn't mean print journalism is dead. The demand for free dailies is strong. People prefer the format of a printed paper to one that they have to read online. Printed newspapers will be here for many years to come, but large metro dailies which rely on elderly subscribers are doomed.

4. Free dailies have dominated Canada because the major newspaper chains operate both free and paid papers in each market. As readership in paid papers declines, free daily readership increases. Advertisers end up staying with newspapers, which have kept pace with the times.

Let's have a robust discussion about this. Let's get a national network going. Let's push a few paid daily companies into going national with free dailies. Now is the time.

Readers love free daily newspapers

2008-07-24T14:01:00.000-07:00

Residents of Palo Alto, California, can't get enough of the free daily newspapers available in their town. The first free daily was the Daily News, which started in 1995 after the collapse of the town's paid circulation daily. The founders of the Daily News, after selling to Knight Ridder four years ago, returned in late May to start the Daily Post. So Palo Alto — the home of Stanford University and many high-tech firms like Hewlett Packard — is seeing a rebound in printed newspapers. It's what the techies might call "Old Media." And, as the Post reports in its July 22 issue, demand for the printed word is soaring:

The part at the end about contacting local businesses seems a bit tacky -- too much like a PBS station beg-a-thon -- but the implication is clear enough: Local advertising makes or breaks these community-oriented free dailies.

Metro CEO proposes network of free dailies

2008-07-22T04:49:00.000-07:00

The head of Metro International, the worldwide free daily chain, tells Reuters that free dailies in the U.S. should consider forming a network for the purpose of attracting ad dollars. Mikael Jensen offered the idea as he announced disappointing quarterly results. Jensen said his chain is looking to grow in Latin America, Asia and Russia, while Western Europe and the United States are ripe for consolidation.

We've got an e-mail into Jensen for comments about his national network. Here's a previous posting on U.S. markets served and unserved by free dailies. Metro is now in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Tribune has free dailies in Chicago and Baltimore. Belo has one in Dallas. There's a solid independent in Denver. Freedom newspapers has one in suburban Phoenix. Poynter has one in St. Pete, Fla. And there's a gaggle of free dailies in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sure, none exist in places like Atlanta, Miami, Houston and L.A., but if the network succeeds, those markets could have papers overnight.

Aspen Daily News marks 30 years

2008-07-20T11:55:00.001-07:00

The Aspen (Colorado) Daily News is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a number of stories in its July 20 edition about its history. (See "Editor's Note," "The road to relevancy," Muckraking publisher looks back, "Who needs advertising?" and a time capsule from 1978.)

While it wasn't the first free daily, in this era where media outlets are repeatedly bought and sold, the Aspen Daily News has had the same owner since the beginning, Dave Danforth.

The paper has an independent streak, it tackles controversial subjects and takes pride in the fact that its news coverage has cost it advertisers. The paper's slogan is "If you don't want it printed, don't let it happen."

The Aspen Daily News began as a single-sheet newspaper on July 1, 1978. In a few years, the paper bought a press and switched to newsprint. In 1988, Aspen got its second daily. The Aspen Times, then a weekly, decided to publish a daily to compete for ad dollars that were moving from the weekly to the Aspen Daily News.

It's hard to imagine a town of 12,000 residents supporting two newspapers, but 20 years later, both are still operating. Aspen is, of course, known for its skiing, but the summer season is strong there too. The weakest times of the year for business are the spring and fall, yet both papers year around without interruption. The Aspen Times is six days a week and the Daily News prints seven days. Shown here is the Aspen Daily News press room. The photo is from the paper's website.

In the free daily industry, most of the attention is paid to commuter dailies like Metro, amNewYork, 24 Hours, RedEye, the Examiner chain, and so on. But a format that receives less attention is the community daily, which seems to have a higher number of profitable papers which have been in existence longer than the commuter dailies. Both Aspen papers are examples of quality commuter dailies. And Aspen's competitive zeal has spread to Vail, where that town just got its second free daily earlier this month.

Examiner kills suburban editions in Bay Area

2008-07-08T02:54:00.000-07:00

The Examiner chain has been getting a lot of positive press about its plans to introduce a Sunday newspaper in San Francisco, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The new edition starts this Sunday, July 13. The move makes sense if you're delivering to homes because people are usually home on Sundays. Why clutter their driveways or doorsteps with unwanted papers on the other days of the week?

But even with the addition of a Sunday edition, the Examiner is cutting costs. First, it is eliminating Saturday editions in those three markets. In other words, the Saturday product is being repackaged and delivered a day later.

And in the Bay Area, the Examiner is dropping its suburban editions serving communities south of San Francisco in San Mateo County. The Examiner plans to close its bureau there and move those staffers to a San Francisco office. Starting Monday, San Mateo County residents will receive the same Examiner as readers in San Francisco.

The Examiner, in all three markets, will have a large, home-delivered circulation on Thursdays and Sundays. The other days of the week, readers will need to visit the Examiner websites or pick up a paper from a news rack. They won't be delivered to homes as in the past.

California paper cuts 1/4th of newsroom

2008-06-27T23:54:00.000-07:00

The Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily News laid off six of its staffers yesterday including five from the newsroom, according to the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club. Given that the free daily only had a newsroom of 20, the cut represents a quarter of the paper's news department.

In addition, the seven-day paper will be reduced to six; its Monday edition will be eliminated. The paper's satellite edition in San Mateo, which lost its Monday edition two years ago, will stop printing on Tuesdays as well.

The Monday edition most recently was 28 pages, according to the Press Club's account. Three years ago, it ranged from 52 to 64 pages.

For several years, the Palo Alto Daily News was seen as one of the most successful free daily newspapers. It was based in Palo Alto, the wealthy home of Stanford University some 35 miles south of San Francisco and 11 miles north of San Jose. Starting in 1995 with an initial eight-page edition, the paper was profitable in nine months and eventually grew to dominate its market area despite competition from traditional dailies and healthy community weeklies. The Daily News branched out and started sister papers in the neighboring towns of San Mateo, Burlingame, Redwood City and Los Gatos. The five papers comprised a company that was known as the Daily News Group.

Owners Dave Price and Jim Pavelich sold the Daily News Group in 2005 to Knight Ridder for $25 million, which is probably a record for a free daily newspaper. The acquisition provided some breathing room for Knight Ridder's San Jose Mercury News, which had been struggling to sell ads in the Palo Alto area due to the Daily News.

MediaNews Group, headed by cost-cutting CEO Dean Singleton of Denver, acquired the Daily News Group when his company bought the San Jose Mercury and a handful of other Knight Ridder papers in 2006 for $1 billion.

Since the original sale, the Daily News has gone through a series of editors and its been redesigned. The paper's emphasis on local news changed. A recent edition contained only three locally bylined stories but more than two dozen wire service articles. And the Palo Alto Daily News literally moved out of Palo Alto to an office park in Menlo Park.

The changes apparently prompted previous owners Price and Pavelich — once their noncompete agreements had expired — to return to the market with a new paper, the Daily Post, which premiered May 27. They opened their offices in the building the Daily News abandoned when it left town. Their bet is that the readers and advertisers still want a local free daily.

The Daily News hasn't said what prompted yesterday's cuts, whether it was problems in Palo Alto or at its parent company. It should be pointed out that other MediaNews papers in San Jose and Walnut Creek, Calif., were laying off employees last week as well. Credit rating agencies say the company is at risk of defaulting on its loans.

Paper that 'lost touch' gets a competitor

2008-06-21T17:55:00.000-07:00

The founder of the Vail Daily, who sold that free daily to Swift Newspapers in 1993, on Friday launched another daily in that Colorado resort town.

The first edition of Jim Pavelich's new Vail Mountaineer was eight pages. It contained about 50 percent advertising from local businesses.

Pavelich said he started the Mountaineer because he is frustrated with the direction the Vail Daily has gone in recent years.

“It was the biggest tourist holiday of the year, and the big headline on the front page, and I’m paraphrasing, said something like, ‘I hate living here.’ And although I don’t remember the details, I remember that the headline was so unbelievably negative about nothing,” Pavelich told www.realvail.com. “I understand this is a real town with real issues, but they’ve lost touch.”

The Mountaineer was the second free daily Pavelich started in the past month. On May 27, Pavelich and Dave Price started the Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily Post. The Post is going up against a newspaper the pair sold in 2005, the Palo Alto Daily News, one of the most successful community free dailies. The now defunct Knight Ridder bought the Palo Alto Daily News for $25 million in 2005; in 2006 it was acquired by MediaNews Group.

Non-competition agreements from both sales have expired, allowing the former owners back into these markets.

In both cases, the new papers are entering markets where readers are already hooked on getting their news from free daily newspapers.

Vail isn't the only Colorado market where two free dailies are competing. Swift's Aspen Times has been going head-to-head with the independent Aspen Daily News for 20 years.

Despite the economic downturn and pessimism about newspapers, the Mountaineer is the fifth free daily to open in 2008. The others are in Baltimore; Halifax, N.S.; Salt Lake City and Palo Alto. Since the beginning of the year, BostonNOW has closed, the Manchester (N.H.) Express switched to a weekly, and the Nashville City Paper transitioned to an online product with a semi-weekly print editions.

This Examiner doesn't belong to Anschutz

2008-06-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

COMMENTARYWith a net worth last year at $7.4 billion (according to Forbes) and with gas prices soaring above $4 a gallon, it's our guess that oilman Phil Anschutz hasn't pushed a cart through a supermarket recently. If he had, the owner of the Examiner chain of newspapers would have encountered an Examiner he doesn't own. On the left is a front page from one of his Examiner newspapers and on the right is the "National Examiner," owned by American Media Corporation of Boca Raton, Fla., which also owns The National Enquirer, Star, Globe and Sun titles. Any attempt by Anschutz to go national with the Examiner probably won't be received well by American Media, which owns the National Examiner brand name. You've got to wonder if Anschutz's newspaper people, such as Ryan McKibben, knew this before announcing plans for a national rollout of the Examiner brand in 2004. That rollout, planned for 70 markets, stopped after three cities. Now it appears that the Anschutz Examiners are copying the National Examiner by putting crime and celebrity stories on the front cover.

Note: The Examiner chain has launched its attack on Democrats who oppose drilling for more oil. This editorial, however, omits any disclosure that the newspaper is owned by an oil industry tycoon.

Random notes & observations

2008-06-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

AWARDS: The rap against free dailies is that their journalism is inferior. Well, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the big winner in the Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards was the paid San Jose Mercury News, with 31 plaques. But in second was the free San Mateo Daily Journal with 23 awards. The Palo Alto Daily News group wasn't far behind with 17 ...

QUICK DOESN'T MEAN QUICK READ: The Dallas Morning News has announced it plans to print a free 16-page broadsheet newspaper called Briefing, which will be thrown on the driveways of non-subscribers in high-income areas. Management is going out of its way to emphasize that the 200,000 circulation Briefing won't be anything like Quick, its 100,000 circulation free daily. “Quick is single-copy,” DMN president and gm John McKeon told E&P, whereas Briefing "is home-delivered. Quick is a tabloid, and Briefing is a broadsheet. Quick is a younger product, and the sweet spot for Briefing is 25-49. It does fill out a portfolio of products to serve different readers.” ...

ENTERTAINMENT? The Washington Examiner is planning to launch an entertainment oriented website. Given the conservative Christian views of owner Phil Anschutz, it will be interesting to see what the site defines as entertainment. Anschutz has produced movies such as the "The Chronicles of Narnia" series, which reinforce his beliefs. A lot of Hollywood keeps its distance from Anschutz since he has bankrolled anti-gay rights ballot measures.

SPEAKING OF ANSCHUTZ, various newspapers including the Wall Street Journal say that the Denver billionaire will be going on trial June 23 for failing to pay $140 million in taxes. The San Francisco Peninsula Press Club website says that his Examiner and City Star newspapers haven't mentioned a word about the case.

Why would this free daily succeed?

2008-05-27T23:06:00.000-07:00

COMMENTARY
The San Francisco Bay Area has become the most saturated place in the country for free dailies. But that hasn't stopped another one from starting. Today, the Palo Alto Daily Post began publishing, becoming that city's second free daily. It's the third paper in that town of 60,000 people if you include a weekly paper. And it doesn't have a website or an online, multi-platform strategy. Yikes!

At this point, you'd think the Palo Alto Daily Post would have two strikes against it -- a lot of competition and no desire to go online.

On the other hand, I can think of three reasons why the smart money would bet on the success of this paper:

Oh, and one more thing. They know Palo Alto. They started the Palo Alto Daily News in 1995, which became arguably the most successful community free daily in the nation ("community" as distinguished from "commuter"). Under their aegis, the paper added editions in a number of surrounding cities. And they sold the paper in 2005 for $25 million, according to the following article in the New York Sun headlined "Heresy in Silicon Valley: Traditional Newspaper Launches." Here are a few excerpts:

Alan Mutter took a decidedly negative tone about what he described as a newspaper war brewing in Silicon Valley:

While Palo Alto is an economically and demographically succulent market where real estate prices continue to climb even to this day, the upscale community hardly seems like a place where multiple, profitable free newspapers would be likely to thrive.Mutter goes on to say that, in his opinion, Palo Alto isn't a good place for free newspapers and that the subway terminals that Metro attempts to dominate are far better vehicles.

OK, in a year or two we will see who is right. In his interview with the New York Sun, Dave Price points out that when he started the Palo Alto Daily News in 1995 "we had a number of people who were supposedly experts in the newspaper industry saying we wouldn't last six months ... We proved them wrong. Not only was the paper a success in a business sense, it won a tremendous number of awards."

Cablevision empire adds amNewYork

2008-05-13T02:59:00.000-07:00

The profitable, 300,000-plus free daily amNew York will be sold, along with its parent Newsday, to Cablevision for $650 million in a bid that has critics howling. They say Cablevision overpaid and they question whether profits from Newsday will even cover the debt service for $650 million. Newsday had profits of $90 million last year, which means Cablevision is willing to pay 6.5 to 7 times cash flow.

What this means to amNewYork is anybody's guess. There has been little media coverage about that part of the deal. It's hard to imagine amNewYork being sold off since it depends greatly on Newsday for content and ads. But if Cablevision overpaid, cutbacks will certainly follow at the newspapers which could hobble amNewYork at a stage when it is becoming a force in New York media.

Examiner cuts back on home delivery days

2008-05-09T03:22:00.000-07:00

The Examiner announced Thursday that it only deliver papers to homes two days a week in its three markets, San Francisco, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

The Examiner is also moving its "weekend edition" from Saturday to Sunday starting July 13.

As a result, the Examiner will no longer be distributed to homes or businesses on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays or Saturdays. On those days, the paper will only be available in news racks and stores.

The move will likely reduce complaints about unwanted Examiners being thrown on driveways and doorsteps.

Like other newspapers that have reduced the number of days they publish, the Examiner is emphasizing that its web site will be beefed up.

It wasn't immediately known why billionaire oilman Phil Anschutz would trim the sales of his newspapers. With oil at $122 a barrel, gas at $4 a gallon and movie tickets at $9.50 (he's the nation's largest owner of cinemas), it's hard to imagine him noticing that his newspapers were losing money.

But there is a famous story about Anschutz's aversion to losing money. He set up his son-in-law, Tim Brown, with an AM radio station in Denver in 2002. The 10,000-watt station lost money, which reportedly angered Anschutz. One day in 2004, Anschutz walked into the station and ordered that the power be cut immediately. He shut down the station on the spot. As employees walked out of the darkened building, they were handed their final checks. His son-in-law was quoted in the Denver Post as saying it was the hardest day of his life.