Free papers sprout up all over the country

The newspaper brokerage firm of Dirks, Van Essen & Murray wrote this detailed report on the growing free daily industry. It's their business to know about such papers since they represent buyers and sellers of publications. The chart at the end of the piece is the most comprehensive list of free dailies in the United States that we've seen. It was accurate as of early 2005.

WaPo profiles Examiner owner Anschutz

The Washington Post, perhaps fearing Phil Anschutz's entry into Washington's newspaper market, has printed this profile of the Denver billionaire. Anschutz bought the San Francisco Examiner last year and some observers have speculated that he plans to start free dailies in other citees.

Some quotes from the article:

• "In 1992, Anschutz contributed $10,000 to a group called Colorado Family Values, to support an amendment to the state constitution that invalidated state and local laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation. Anschutz's money helped pay for an ad campaign that said such anti-bias laws gave gays and lesbians 'special rights.' The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned the amendment as discriminatory."

• "In 2002, New York Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer sued Anschutz and four telecom executives, accusing Anschutz of making $1.5 billion in "unjust enrichment revenue," including the sale of initial-public-offering stock Anschutz received in the hopes he would steer investment banking business to Citigroup Inc. Anschutz and Spitzer reached an agreement in which Anschutz admitted no wrongdoing and later paid $4.4 million to law schools and charities, and Spitzer agreed to drop the suit."

• "Anschutz persuaded a movie studio to pay him $100,000 to film Adair putting out his well fire for a 1967 John Wayne film called 'Hellfighters.' The fire was put out and Anschutz saved his business."

• The billionaire wants to change people's way of thinking: "In a rare public speech in February, reported by the Wall Street Journal, Anschutz told the audience: 'My friends think I'm a candidate for a lobotomy, and my competitors think I'm naive or stupid or both. But you know what? I don't care. If we can make some movies that have a positive effect on people's lives and on our culture, that's enough for me.'"

• "Anschutz is an active Republican donor. Since 1996, he, his companies and members of his family have given more than $500,000 in campaign contributions to GOP candidates and committees."

• "However, none of these scandals has yet to tarnish Anschutz's reputation ..."

But in San Francisco, they have an idea of what Anschutz is up to. "When he bought the Examiner, we thought, 'What the hell is this guy doing?' Its business prospects were not phenomenal," said Tim Redmond, executive editor of the liberal San Francisco Bay Guardian. "When we found out who he was, we were nervous he was going to bring his Christian-evangelical politics to San Francisco."

Anschutz has supported socially conservative causes. In 1987, Anschutz's family foundation gave Focus on the Family founder James Dobson an award for his "contributions to the American Family." According to its Web site, the Denver-based group works to "counter the media-saturating message that homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable" and one of its policy experts called legalized abortion an example of when "Satan temporarily succeeds in destroying God's creation."

California paper puts out an 'Extra!'

Talk about a throw back to the 1920s and 30s! A free daily newspaper in Northern California published an extra (as in "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!") minutes after the verdict in the Scott Peterson murder case came in. Extras were common before broadcast journalism emerged, but they're unheard of today. The last one we heard of was in 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated, and morning papers wanted to compete with evening papers on the story. The extra was printed by the Redwood City Daily News, which is part of the five-paper Palo Alto Daily News group. According to the AP, the Extra was handed out by Daily News employees within 15 minutes of the verdict. Extras were distributed in Redwood City, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View, San Mateo and Burlingame. The editor of the group is Brian Bothun and the publishers are Dave Price and Jim Pavelich, longtime innovators in the free daily field.

Third U.S. Metro paper opens today in NYC

Newspapers have been published in New York City since 1725. But the first free paper, amNewYork, started seven months ago on October 10. Today the second free daily started. Metro New York is part of the Swedish chain of more than 50 papers which includes editions in Philadelphia, Boston and Toronto. Like amNewYork, Metro will be circulated on subway platforms, on the streets and through news racks. In the past seven months, amNewYork's circulation has jumped from 150,000 to 209,000 (audited). Publisher Russel Pergament says that since the audit, the circulation is up to 221,000 copies a day. Metro has got a long way to go. Both papers will be striving to reach the 18- to 34-year-old reader who has largely stopped reading newspapers and is coveted by advertisers. Metro New York's publisher is Henry Scott, who launched the NY Times's @times, a site on America Online.

Dallas: AM Journal closes, Quick wins

The war between free dailies in Dallas has ended after five months. The A.M. Journal Express, started November 12 by Jeremy Halbreich and his American Consolidated Media, published its last issue yesterday, April 30. When plans for the A.M. Journal Express were revealed in September, Belo's Dallas Morning News swiftly created its own free daily newspaper, called Quick, which hit the streets two weeks earlier than the Journal Express. The Dallas Business Journal says Halbreich's investors decided to pull the plug. The Journal had 26 staffers who will reportedly be offered jobs within American Consolidated Media. Halbreich complained in the Dallas media about "overly hostile" actions by the Morning News that included confrontations with A.M. Journal's distributors and threats against advertisers. Meanwhile, the Morning News says Quick is gaining acceptance with readers as it grows.

Metro coming to New York

Metro International, the Swedish company with 34 free dailies worldwide including Boston and Philadelphia, plans to launch in New York in May. The launch was delayed because amNew York hit the market first in 2003. Metro NY's publisher will be Henry Scott, who worked in new media at The New York Times and also was president of Out magazine. The editor will be Stefano Hatfield, who wrote for Advertising Age and was Ad Age Global's editorial director.

More about the Frisco Examiner sale

Look, I'm confused as everybody else about why a conservative Christian has bought a struggling newspaper in San Francisco, a city that Christians might consider a modern day sodom and gomorrah. Tim Porter, a respected journalist in Northern California, has this view:

Anschutz is politically and religiously conservative, and has financially supported measures and organizations that are anti-gay and crusade against "overly sexualized" magazines, the Chronicle reported. Could it be that Anschultz wants to establish a conservative media voice in San Francisco to cater to that part of the city who is not thrilled, for example, to see gay couples lining up by the thousands to married in City Hall?

Bob Starzel, a longtime executive for Anschutz and now chairman of the Examiner, hints at this when says, as the Chronicle put it, that the paper "will concentrate on local news, business and sports coverage, with an emphasis on neighborhoods."


"People in San Francisco live in separate neighborhoods, but to a degree they do not know each other that well," said Starzel, who lives in the outer Richmond district.


"Neighborood coverage" is a code phrase used by San Francisco's conservatives -- and, yes, there are some, enough, in fact, to rise up occasionally and elect one of their own mayor -- when they decry front-page stories about gay rights or the homeless. Conservatives, of the moderate variety, are generally thought to represent about a third of the San Francisco electorate and most live on the west side of the city, Starzell's neighborhood.

Perhaps Anschutz intends to take one of journalism's core tenets and give voice to those San Francisco conservatives, who regularly complain they are voiceless in the Chronicle.

Anschutz was waged a proxy campaign for decades against gays. What better place is there to make that battle more personal through the pages of a newspaper than in San Francisco?

So let's say, for the sake of argument, that Frisco is two-thirds liberal and one-third conservative. The Chronicle would get the two-thirds of the liberal readership and the Examiner would get the rest. Each might be able to survive. Who knows? It all depends on how a newspaper is edited -- if a liberal paper is interesting, everybody will read it. If a conservative paper is interesting, everybody will read that too, though the liberals will deny reading it.

Conservative billionaire buys San Francisco paper

Conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz (pictured; AP photo) has bought the San Francisco Examiner from the Florence Fang family for a reported $20 million. The Fang family bought the paper in 2000 from the Hearst Corporation, which sold it in order to buy the San Francisco Chronicle, the morning paper it had prized for many years. The Hearst's first choice would have been to close the Examiner, but the political powers that be insisted on two newspapers in Frisco, so the Examiner stumbles on. It's unknown what Anschutz will do with the Examiner, but his politics are conservative and anti-gay, which could mean trouble in San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Same-sex marriages appear decidedly out of step with values openly espoused by Anschutz. In the 1990s, he backed Colorado's Amendment 2, the highly contentious measure that sought to restrict Colorado's cities from adopting civil-rights protections specifically for gays and lesbians. The issue reached national proportions, with opponents boycotting business with the state.

According to published reports, Anschutz donated $10,000 to Colorado for Family Values, backers of the amendment, during the heated final days of the campaign. The amendment passed in 1992 but was later overturned by the state's Supreme Court. The media watchdog group Morality in Media, established in 1962 and based in New York, reportedly has received generous support from Anschutz for its crusades against pornography and obscenity in magazines, movies, television and other outlets.

The nonprofit, interfaith group advocates letter-writing campaigns to government agencies and company executives in its efforts to stamp out material it deems inappropriate. Morality in the Media has made news for, among other reasons, its high-profile statements calling Cosmopolitan (owned by The Chronicle's parent firm, The Hearst Corp.) and Glamour magazines "overly sexualized" and its support for Internet filters on computers in public libraries.

Whether Anschutz will discard his morals in San Francisco, or use his paper to change the community, is an unknown at this point. Much of San Francisco's business community, including people in ad agencies and ad-buyers, are gay. It will be interesting to see if they read up on the Examiner's new owner or just watch his people's Powerpoint presentations without asking questions.

Quick, American Journal battle in Dallas

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

Quick is quicker than the competition

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

NY Times profiles amNewYork's Pergament

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

New York gets first free daily

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

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

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

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

Express lampooned by weekly competitor

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

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

Express lampooned by weekly competitor

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

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

Washington Post to launch free daily

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

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

Sounds like the Metro formula to us.

Washington Post to start free daily

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

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

Examiner publsher called "corporate vulture"

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

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

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

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

Anschutz is no newcomer to nurturing ecclesiastic loonies.

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

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

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

Major California daily goes free

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

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

Growth of free dailies charted by academic

Here's a link to a paper by Amsterdam University's Piet Bakker that charts the growth of free daily newspapers. The paper heavily focuses on Europe and ignores early free dailies in the U.S. dating back to the 1970s. While talking about the Metro International chain (which still isn't profitable after seven years in business), he ignores the profitable free dailies in places like Palo Alto, Calif., Aspen, Colo., and Conway, N.H., to name just a few. But his conclusion is one we can all take to the bank -- "Because free dailies have also proven to be attractive to a younger audience, the future looks relatively bright."

More details about Berkeley paper's closure

While most free dailies are enjoying growth and success, the Berkeley (California) Daily Planet is a notable exception. It closed yesterday after 3 1/2 years in business. Started in 1997 by three Stanford business school graduates and two journalists, it attempted to survive by offering low cost advertising like other free dailies. A story in the San Francisco Chronicle today quotes the editor of the Planet as expressing disappointment over the closure considering that he had made a number of changes in the past few months to improve news coverage. Apparently it was too little, too late. The paper had three editors and three reporters, 10 regular contributors, a handful of interns and a tiny business staff. Circulation varied, and Alexander estimated it in the 15,000-20,000 range just before it closed. The Planet's owners started a paper in San Mateo, California, about 15 miles away, and claim that it is doing well.

Berkeley (California) 'Daily Planet' folds

A free daily serving Berkeley, California, closed today after printing its last issue. The University of California Daily Cal newspaper reports that the Planet's employees learned about the closure when arrived at work today and found a note on the door. The Los Angeles Times reported in January that the Planet had failed to turn a profit since its 1999 inception. "This year there had been a continued decline in pages, and the number of pages is the number of ads," said Judith Scherr, who had been a reporter at the paper for about 18 months.

Chicago Trib's RedEye should be a free daily

When you read this press release about the Chicago Tribune's new RedEye daily, you might be asking yourself why it costs 25 cents.

With its tightly-edited mix of topical news and features coupled with its daily frequency, the RedEye edition stands out from other publications targeting young adults.

"If readers give us 20 minutes, we'll make the most of their time," said Jane Hirt, RedEye co-editor. "We'll plug them in each day on everything from the top news stories to the hottest celebrity gossip, and not always in that order.""

Obviously RedEye is aimed at the 18- to 34-year-old demographic — readers who have eschewed paid broadsheets and any other paid content. They feel they shouldn't have to pay for news. If the Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, made RedEye free and distributed it at the same locations as the rival Sun-Times, guess what would happen? The Sun-Times would be out of business in a few years.

New free daily in Los Gatos, California

The Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily News has launched another paper in Los Gatos, Calif., a city of about 20,000 west of San Jose, Calif., in the middle of Silicon Valley. Los Gatos had a daily years ago that was acquired by the San Jose Mercury News, the region's dominant newspaper. It will be interesting to see if the Palo Alto formula of small-town news will work in a sophisticated, cutting-edge tech hub.

Free daily launches in Denver

Denver, Colo. now has a free daily. The Denver Daily News hit the streets yesterday (May 10). The owners are Mike Kirshbaum, Jim Pavelich and Dave Pierce. Kirschbaum was formerly head of the Summit County Daily in Breckenridge, and it is the operating partner in this paper. Pavelich started the Vail Daily and Pierce the Aspen Times. Pavelich and Pierce are now putting out the Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily News. The first edition of the "Denver Daily" was 8 pages, but the optimistic staff hopes it will grow. Denver has two other dailies, the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post, which have become "regional" papers, ignoring a city that can be interesting at times.