Nashville free daily hires new publisher

Nashville's free daily, The City Paper, announced Friday (June 2) that it has hired the publisher of that town's alt-weekly as its publisher. Albie Del Favero, 52, who has been with the Nashville Scene for 17 years, starts Monday at The City Paper. Interim Publisher Jim Ezzell -- CFO of Thompson Machinery Commerce Corp., one of The City Paper's shareholders -- led the free daily for the last 23 months while owners hunted for a new publisher. The City Paper was founded Nov. 1, 2000 by local businessman Brian Brown, who stepped down as publisher on March 2, 2004. A replacement, Tom Larimer, lasted about six months. Then Ezzell stepped in as interim publisher.

“Free circulation daily newspapers and their Web sites are the future of print journalism and the daily newspaper industry,” Del Favero said. “The City Paper has been ahead of the curve since it was founded, but now is in the right place at the right time to become one of the next major success stories in American newspapers.”

Said Clint Brewer, The City Paper's executive editor: “Albie’s track record speaks for itself. He understands the importance of quality journalism to a community, and I look forward to working with him to make The City Paper Nashville’s true daily newspaper.”

• Wikipedia entry on The City Paper
• The City Paper's Web site

The new free daily nobody is talking about

One of the most exciting free dailies in the U.S. is in Nashville. The City Paper (that's it's name) launched last November with 17 full-time news staffers and a daily circulation of 40,000. It is taking on Nashville's big daily, The Tennessean, with a daily circulation of 186,793 and 260,733 on Sundays. The Tennessean, owned by Gannett, has not faced daily competition since the Nashville Banner closed on Feb. 20, 1998 with a circulation of 40,633.

The City Paper is being financed by a local computer software entrepreneur, Brian Brown, who has no previous newspaper experience. However, every member of his newsroom staff has worked at other dailies, many at The Tennessean.

Nationally, there's been no coverage that I can find of the launch of The City Paper. I found a few local stories in Nashville (which form the basis of this posting), but the media that has written so much about Metro International's launches in North America has ignored The City Paper.

While The Tennessean sees itself as a regional paper, and it carries a lot of national news as well, The City Paper is much more local. "News as it hits your neighborhood, not as it hits the City Council agenda. We're trying to carve our own niche," Catherine Mayhew, City Paper executive editor, told the trade publication Brandweek. Brandweek is one of the few places where I found any information about The City Paper. The quote above is from its February 5 issue.

Nashville daily evolving from print to online

A free daily in Nashviille, The City Paper, has purchased a system from Olive Software of Santa Clara, Calif., that allows online readers to easily page through the paper, seeing pages as they would be displayed in print. The software allows readers to click on ads and reach advertisers websites, according to a press release from Olive Systems. Wehaa Design LLC is vendor of similar software. Both companies sell systems that will take the PDFs that a newspaper already makes and coverts them into pages that are easily turned, enlarged/reduced and searched.

In the press release, Albie Del Favero, publisher of The City Paper, says: “We are a free daily in the mold of European commuter dailies, but since Nashvillians don’t typically commute via train or the bus, we distribute the paper in office buildings rather than commuter stations. Because of this, our readers are more likely to read The City Paper at their desks in the morning. And what we found was that increasingly more of them were actually reading the paper online. Because of this online readership growth and the expense of printing and delivering the paper each and every day, we are slowly evolving the paper from a print product to a primarily digital product.

“There are lots of places to go to get national news, but there are very few places to get in-depth local news,” said Del Favero. “That’s why we remain focused on providing local, and not national or international news.

Nashville daily sold, cut to twice a week

The City Paper, a free daily in Nashville that has struggled for 7-1/2 years to make a profit, has been sold to a local company that plans to reduce its publication schedule to twice a week beginning April 28. Publisher Albie Del Favero and Editor Clint Brewer will continue to have the same jobs after the sale, and no layoffs were planned. The buyer, SouthComm Communications, also owns online business, music and news sites. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed but the seller, Caterpillar machinery dealer De Thompson V, will join the board of directors of SouthComm and take a stake in the company, according to NashvillePost.com, a site owned by SouthComm.

SouthComm, headed by former Nashville council member and former local alt-weekly publisher Chris Ferrell, told the Nashville Business Journal he has been working on a new model for print and online media and the City Paper fits into his model. The model includes breaking news through e-mails and the Internet, while serving readers through less-regular print products.

Last November, Publisher Del Favero said in a press release about the purchase of a new software system that his paper was evolving from print to online: "We are a free daily in the mold of European commuter dailies, but since Nashvillians don’t typically commute via train or the bus, we distribute the paper in office buildings rather than commuter stations. Because of this, our readers are more likely to read The City Paper at their desks in the morning. And what we found was that increasingly more of them were actually reading the paper online. Because of this online readership growth and the expense of printing and delivering the paper each and every day, we are slowly evolving the paper from a print product to a primarily digital product."

A look at The City Paper in Nashville

Albie Del Favero, publisher of The City Paper in Nashville, was candid when we asked him to discuss his free daily newspaper, saying it has been a struggle so far but that he's now making some progress. Free-Daily.com asked Del Favero the following questions:

Q: Your paper has been around since 2001, a competitor to the Tennessean — How is it going?

Del Favero: It's been a struggle since the very beginning and it's still a struggle, but we're beginning to make some progress. Part of our problem has been that we were started by and are now owned by two different individuals, neither of whom had any experience in the newspaper industry. We have also re-invented ourselves too many times and have never been consistent in the product that we deliver to either readers or advertisers.

Q: What can you tell me about sales in the past year?

Del Favero: We will probably close out 2007 flat or a little down against 2006. But that is more a result of internal problems and changes than it is a reflection on the acceptance of our product in the marketplace or the local economy.

Q: Is City Paper in the black?

Del Favero: No.

Q: How large is your staff? Please break it down by editorial, sales, circulation, production, etc.

Del Favero: Just under 40, counting sports stringers. We have 18 in edit, 5 in production, 3 in classified sales, and 7 in display sales, 1.5 in circulation and four in admin, including IT. We have several open positions in sales.

Q: What is your average daily page count?

Del Favero: We publish 24 pages Monday through Thursday and either 32 or 40 on Friday, which is our big real estate day.

Q: How do you distribute your product (by hand, thrown on driveways, placed in stores, work places, etc.)?

Del Favero: Place-based, primarily in office buildings, retailers and street boxes.

Q: Who is your target audience?

Del Favero: We are a general-interest newspaper, targeted primarily to well-educated adults aged 25-54 in our core county and contiguous suburbs.

Q: Since you started, what surprised you the most?

Del Favero: How little attention large retailers pay us, despite the declining reach and penetration of the Tennessean.

Q: Some critics of free dailies say they don't have the quality journalism you could find in paid dailies. What do you say to that?

Del Favero: I would say that you can't paint free dailies with a broad brush. Ask just about anyone in Nashville, particularly the movers and shakers in the community, and they'll tell you we do an infinitely better job of covering our local community, both in quality and quantity, than the Tennessean does.

Q: For publishers elsewhere in the United States, what have you learned that might help them put out a better or more profitable newspaper?

Del Favero: Since I'm not yet putting out a profitable paper, I'm not sure I'm qualified to dish out advice. But I would say that the key is that every market is different — I'm not sure there's a formula for free dailies, particularly in markets the size of Nashville and smaller, like there is for alt-weeklies or community newspapers. You've got to look for holes in the market, be able to zig when your primary competitors zag.

Here are some other profiles Free-Daily.com has done on start-up dailies:

• July 18, 2007, Editor opens free daily in North Carolina

• May 5, 2007, Youth-oriented "Link" (Norfolk, Va.) growing steadily

• June 20, 2007, Manchester (N.H.) Express turns corner

Ex Examiner circ employee speaks out

The Baltimore alternative weekly City Paper got a letter-to-the-editor worth mentioning here. For a couple of months now, we've been observing the problems billionaire Phil Anschutz's Examiner newspapers have had with their business model, which calls for throwing papers on lawns or driveways of high-income neighborhoods whether the paper is requested or not. People who don't want the Examiner say they can't stop the paper, even after repeated calls. In Baltimore, attorney Joel Levin is seeking a restraining order to stop delivery to his home. After an article about Levin's lawsuit, the Baltimore City Paper got this eye-opening letter:

Thank you for the great laughs and chills I got from the Nov. 8 Newshole article regarding Joel Levin's restraining order against The Examiner ("Using Restraint"). I was the customer service representative for the circulation department for a whole entire month before I walked out on the job for the second and final time. There wasn't a single day that I wasn't either threatened with multiple lawsuits or begged by a paraplegic to stop throwing garbage on his property. It's about time someone took this step, and as someone who may have filled half of Baltimore with false hopes of a litter-free lawn, I offer my deepest sympathies.
Brian Hagermann
Perry Hall

Here's a link to the Baltimore Sun story about Levin's lawsuit. Above are signs Baltimore residents have posted outside their homes, attempting to stop delivery of the Examiner. Photo from Baltimore City Paper.

Examiner goes on damage control mode

After months of ignored complaints from readers, Phil Anschutz's Examiner in Baltimore has finally acknowledged that it is delivering papers to residents who don't want the right-wing newspaper.

This morning, buried on page 20, the Examiner carries a story headlined "A complaint about delivery of The Baltimore Examiner." Note the word "complaint" in the singular, even though stories in both the Baltimore Sun and the alt-weekly Baltimore City Paper have said that the paper has received numerous complaints. City Paper even ran pictures of signs people had put outside, trying to stop the paper (see above).

Then, the brief introduction to the publisher's "letter" describes the "delivery problems" as being from a "small percentage of area residents." Really? If the Examiner doesn't even respond to people's complaints, as City Paper alleges, how would it know the number of complaints? In the letter, Publisher Michael Phelps strikes the same tone, saying the Examiner has received a "small number of requests" to stop delivery and a "handful" of complaints. He doesn't give an exact number, so one is left to imagine what "small" and "handful" might mean to him -- 1,000? 10,000? Who knows? It sounds like Phelps has his hands full.

The letter goes on to claim that the Examiner is reaching 236,000 "Baltimore market households each day" and has a daily readership of 360,000 people. We note, too, that not only was the story buried on page 20, well past the local news section, it also appeared on a Saturday -- a day often regarded as the lowest day of the week for readership.

THE POINT: This blog reports on the free daily newspaper industry. We're also very bullish about free dailies, beliving they are the future for print journalism. But when a publication like the Examiner attempts to downplay or obfucate an important issue like this, it reflects poorly on other free dailies who have better business practices. We hope the billionaire who owns the Examiners spends a little of his money to improve distribution.

San Francisco Examiner offspring ridiculed

The SF Daily is also printing humorous blurbs in its "Town Talk" section about the new competitor. One was about a business person who threw the City Star ad reps out of her store. "She didn't break any bones, but we appreciate her attitude," the item said. Another blurb said that what felt like an earthquake was actually "William Randolph Hearst rolling over in his grave when he learned about the latest downsizing of his former flagship newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner," referring to the City Star. The SF Daily was pleased to report that San Franciscians have even given Anschutz's paper a nickname -- "the Sh***y Star."

Before the Examiner rolled out the City Star, the Examiner's editor, James Pimentel, was quoted as saying that the new paper wasn't an attempt to copy the SF Daily. If that's so, then what is the purpose of the City Star? The Examiner has suffered after it was sold by the Hearst Corp. in 2000. The first owner used the Examiner to promote candiates on the front page including family members. Anschutz bought the Examiner in 2004 and turned it into a conservative paper -- a bad fit in a city known for its liberalism. The Examiner hasn't appeared to grow much during Anschutz's watch. Maybe he's hoping to build up the City Star so he can jetison the Examiner?

Oddly enough, the City Star doesn't mention anywhere that it is part of the Examiner or owned by Anschutz. It says it is owned by San Francisco Newspaper Company, LLC., a fairly generic name. One wonders why Anschutz wouldn't want his name on his paper? You'd think the journalists at the Examiner would insist on full disclosure or "truth in labeling." Also, it's worth noting that the Examiner hasn't written anything about its new sister paper. Is the Examiner staff embarrassed by its sibling?

Many large media markets lack free dailies

Four of the nation's top 10 metropolitan areas don't have a free daily. Yet New York and Boston each have two. And San Francisco and Washington each have three.

The growth of free dailies in the United States hasn't been predictable or logical. At least that's what we found when we took a list of the country's top 50 metro areas and looked at which ones have free dailies. Here's what we found.

1. New York has two, Tribune Co.'s amNewYork and Metro New York. It's believed that am makes money, Metro doesn't. (This analysis doesn't include Spanish-language dailies or trade publication dailies, like Daily Variety or Women's Wear Daily.)

2. Los Angeles has zero. The suburb of Santa Monica has one. The Orange County Register has launched a tabloid paper called the OC Post, but it's paid. Some have suggested the OC Post would thrive if it were free. Rumors that billionaire oilman Phil Anschutz would expand his Examiner chain to L.A. appear to be wrong (see separate item).

3. Chicago has one, the RedEye (one word), owned by the Chicago Tribune. It's profitable and just launched a weekend home-delivered edition. The RedEye appears to be picking up the young readers the Chicago Tribune has lost. And it seems to be an effective way of reducing the circulation of the rival Sun-Times, a paid tabloid that often is sold side-by-side the free RedEye.

4. Philadelphia has one, Metro. This appears to be the most successful of the three Metros in the U.S. (Boston and NY being the other two locations) and it is said to be close to making a profit. When Metro started in 2000, it obtained an exclusive contract to distribute on train station platforms with a local transit agency. Both the Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Times sued, saying a government agency can't sell distribution rights on its property. Metro won, but it was a hollow victory. Metro soon discovered that the people riding public transit weren't the desirable demographics ad agencies wanted to reach. When the contract expired, Metro did not want to renew, and nobody else took their place.

5. Dallas-Fort Worth -- one free daily, Quick, owned by the Dallas Morning News. The Belo-owned Morning News used Quick to fight off a startup called the American Journal, which disappeared less than a year after it started. Quick has blossomed since then into daily that, like RedEye, is catching younger readers who aren't reading traditional paid papers.

6. Miami-Fort Lauderdale -- none. Maybe one reason is that Miami and Dade County have become increasingly Spanish speaking, but Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale) certainly has enough English-speaking potential readers.

7. Washington -- three. The newest is The Politico, which was launched earlier this year by the Albritton family, owner of the town's ABC affiliate and the defunct Washington Star. Anschutz has an Examiner there, with a number of conservative commentators, who apparently are trying to compete with the paid Washington Times for that segment of the market. Washington's biggest and most successful free daily is the Express, which was launched by the Washington Post out of fears that Metro would be coming to town.

8. Houston -- nada.

9. Atlanta -- nope.

10. Detroit -- zip.

11. Boston -- two. Metro and the new BostonNOW, owned by an Icelandic phone company that plans to launch 10-12 free dailies across the U.S.

12. San Francisco -- three. The Examiner, the San Francisco Daily and The City Star. This could be the most saturated media market in the country. It's also home to three alternative weeklies, several community weeklies, a handful of glossy city magazines and Web sites of every stripe. Six more free dailies operate in the suburbs, giving the Bay Area a total of nine — the most of any market in the country and maybe the world.

No free dailies in markets 13 (Riverside-San Bernaardino-Ontario, CA), 14 (Phoenix), 15 (Seattle), 16 (Minneapolis-St. Paul), 17 (San Diego) or 18 (St. Louis).

19. Baltimore — one. An Anschutz Examiner. Rumors that the incumbent Baltimore Sun is planning one too.

20. Tampa-St. Petersburg — one, the "tbt*" which is owned by the St. Petersburg Times (which, in turn, is owned by the Poynter Institute) and is targeting the 18-34 audience. It may also have an impact on the rival Tampa Tribune (owned by Media General) like the Chicago RedEye has had on the Sun-Times.

21. Pittsburgh -- one. A suburban paper, the Greensburg Tribune-Review, is delivering a free afternoon daily (called Trib p.m.) to selected Zip codes in steeltown. (See our May 13 item on this paper.

22. Denver -- one, the Denver Daily News, an independent.

No free dailies in markets 23 (Cleveland), 24 (CIncinnati), 25 (Portland), 26 (Sacramento), 27 (Kansas City), 28 (San Antonio), 29 (Orlando), 30 (San Jose, CA), 21 (Columbus, OH)

32. Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA -- one, Link, a youth oriented free daily owned by The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk last year (See our May 5 item on Link.

No free dailies in markets 33 (Providence, RI), 34 (Indianapolis), 35 (Las Vegas), 36 (Milwaukee), 37 (Charlotte, NC) or 38 (Austin, TX), 39.

39. Nashville -- one, The City Paper, independent.

No free dailies in market No. 40 (New Orleans), 41 (Memphis), 42 (Jacksonville), 43 (Louisville), 44 (Hartford), 45 (Buffalo, NY), 46 (Richmond, VA), 47 (Oklahoma City), 48 (Birmingham, AL), 49 (Rochester, NY) or 50 (Salt Lake City).

While some markets probably have too many free dailies (San Francisco, Washington, Boston) most of the Top 50 cities don't have any. As paid papers crumble, the opportunities in these unserved markets look more attractive.

(If you see any errors in this report, please e-mail me at free-daily@hotmail.com.)

San Francisco inundated with free dailies

Above are a number of newspapers I picked up while visiting San Francisco. They're all free. Which is great for readers but bad for publishers. San Francisco has got to be the nation's most saturated market when it comes to free newspapers, both daily and weekly.

Among the dailies, I count 9 titles: San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco City Star, San Francisco Daily, Palo Alto Daily News, San Mateo Daily Journal, San Mateo Daily News, Burlingame Daily News, East Bay Daily News and Redwood City Daily News.

And if that weren't enough, the region boasts several very readable alt-weeklies: SF Weekly, Bay Guardian, East Bay Express, Metro (San Jose) and The Bohemian. Plus a number of community weeklies too numerous to name even on a Web site.

MONEY IN TOILETS: There is more print media in the Bay Area than one can imagine. Perhaps it's due to the perceived weakness of the perennial paid dailies of the region, the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle, MediaNews Group's San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa (County) Times, and the New York Times' Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Each of those paid dailies have their strengths, but they're also boring: How do they match headlines in the free press such as "The City may throw millions into toilets" (SF Examiner, Aug. 23). And on that same day, when the Chronicle was writing about high school seniors passing exit exams, the SF Daily's headline was "Seniors having plenty of sex, survey shows," referring to those who graduated from high school many decades ago.

While all of these free papers are fun to read, obviously some aren't making money. Denver oil billionaire Phil Anschutz owns both the San Francisco Examiner and the City Star. It was the first place I headed when I arrived in town. It's right across from the bus station. The guard didn't let me past his podium, however.

EXAMINER CAN'T SURVIVE: But on the phone, an account executive told me the Examiner's circulation was 160,000 a day. I asked her how many pages, and she claimed the average page count was 60, though the three days I was there, it never got above 48. Still, assume it's 60. It would cost at least $9,000 a day to print that big of a paper (assuming newsprint at $610/ton), which comes to $2.9 million a year.

Assume the Examiner's payroll approaches $3 million a year (30 people at $100K including benefits), and the Examiner is at least a $5.9 million operation. With rent and other expenses, maybe $7 million.

So I take a rate card and go through a week of issues. Most of the pages are entirely editorial with no ads, or just house ads. On the 20 or so ads in every issue, assuming that the Examiner got top dollar on every ad, and assuming that every movie ad was paid (Anschutz is the nation's biggest movie theater owner), the Examiner generates perhaps $1.7 million a year in billings (and that's being generous).

I know Anschutz is rich, but how long will he put up with those kinds of losses?

Sadly, when you walk through residential areas, you see doorsteps with Examiners in plastic bags piled up -- unread. Piles of them. That's bad advertising for free papers. It says the paper is unwanted. It makes me think of the lawsuits the Examiner is facing in Washington and Baltimore from angry residents who don't want the free paper.

READER DEMAND: Unwanted is not the term you'd apply to the SF Daily, whose blue newsracks were empty by noon each day and their paper is stuffed with ads. It's no exaggeration to say that 70 percent of their column inches are advertising, and they have many more advertisers than the Examiner, which has been in San Francisco since the Civil War. Clearly the SF Daily is making money.

Publishers Dave Price and Jim Pavelich seem to have the touch when it comes to attracting readers and advertiser. You see people reading it in restaurants, shops and even people stopping by racks to grab a copy — perhaps because they don't have an internet edition.

But getting in touch with them proved to be impossible during my three-day visit. Here's what Amsterdam professor Piet Bakker found when he visited the SF Daily. And here's a local TV story about them.

The SF Daily had its share of hard news stories, but also things that made me laugh out loud like "Bullwinkle blamed for climate change" -- a story about how a moose belch would equal the greenhouse-gas output of a car going 20,800 miles. Or a horoscope that tells Aries readers: "If you drink, don't park. Accidents cause people." (Get it? It took me a minute!)

In the mid-1990s, Price and Pavelich started the Palo Alto Daily News, a paper about 30 miles south of San Francisco in a suburb best known for being the home of Stanford University. In the 10 years that they owned that paper, they started separate editions in San Mateo, Redwood City, Burlingame and Berkeley. They're now owned by MediaNews Group, which also owns a number of other Bay Area papers.

The battle of the free dailies in the Bay Area is just that -- a battle. We didn't even bring up the free weeklies, which were more interesting than alt-weeklies we've seen in other cities. It will be interesting to see who wins this battle of attrition.

California city removes free paper's racks

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.

Good news, bad news for Examiner

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.

Why would this free daily succeed?

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:

1. The Post's publishers are entering a market already accustomed to the free daily concept.

2. This paper has figured out that the Internet doesn't help them. Think of all the readership printed newspapers have lost because they put their stories online. People now know that if they want to read a scoop, they should go online. But online advertising isn't working out for newspapers. Nobody is able to fund the costs of newsgathering with an online edition. Maybe the Post guys have figured that out.

3. And the Post guys are none other than Dave Price and Jim Pavelich, who have started several profitable free daily newspapers over the years in Colorado and California. They know what they're doing.

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:

In another act of brazen heresy against the prevailing dot-com culture here, the Palo Alto Daily Post, which published its first issue yesterday, has no Web site. At a time when most newspaper owners are looking to the Internet to revive their struggling industry, the new paper's owners, James Pavelich and David Price, brusquely dismiss the need for an online presence.

"We're a newspaper," Mr. Pavelich said in an interview yesterday as he returned from shuttling his inaugural edition to newsboxes around town. "The Internet is a form of broadcast to me. We're not broadcasters. We just don't have the time to run two businesses."

... Earlier this year, the Daily News moved its offices out of Palo Alto, to neighboring Menlo Park. Messrs. Pavelich and Price swooped in, tweaking the competition by renting space in the same building it just vacated. "It was kind of comical to us and we jumped at it," Mr. Pavelich said.

Executives at the Daily News did not return calls seeking comment.

... The Daily Post's inaugural issue featured articles about city volunteers quitting over mandatory fingerprinting and a physician facing charges for prescribing medicine over the Internet to a Stanford student who committed suicide. At 28 pages, the paper is just a tad thinner than the gaunt metropolitan dailies from San Francisco and San Jose.

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."

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."

Free daily starts in Manchester, New Hampshire

The slogan of New Hampshire is "Live Free or Die." Now Manchester, N.H., has a daily that's free. The Manchester Daily Express began May 22 and will publish five days a week. Owned by the same local company that has a free arts and entertainment weekly, the paper's goal is to sell affordable advertising to small mom-and-pop businesses who can't afford the rates of the city's main paper, the Manchester Union Leader, or the community's radio and TV stations. (Where have we heard that before? Palo Alto?)

Daily Express Publisher Jody Reese, 32, said, "There is no Manchester daily paper right now ... There's a statewide paper that has an office in Manchester, but there's no one doing city politics or doing a good job covering business. We have three major high schools in the city, and they get very cursory coverage right now." Reese used to work at the Union Leader.

Talk about dropping a gauntlet. Union Leader Publisher Joe McQuaid called Reese's accusation "nonsense" and said his paper's coverage was "second to none, and it will continue to be so." Asked by the Concord Monitor to be more specific, and McQuaid said, "My words will have to speak for themselves. I'm not about to explain to the Concord Monitor exactly what we intend to do."

The Daily Express calls itself a free 20-minute read but aims to be hard-hitting.

The Daily Express will run opinion columns, but Reese said the Daily Express would not stake out a particular political stance.

The Daily Express will have an initial press run of 3,000 and a staff of two reporters and an editor.

• Concord Monitor: Manchester's second daily paper debuts

• E&P: Free Daily To Appear in Manchester, N.H., on Monday

• AP: New Hampshire woke up to a new daily newspaper Monday.

• Manchester Daily Express Web site

Portland (Maine) free daily is intensely local

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.

10 ways to improve your distribution

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. If you can't buy new racks, get used ones. Calls to landfill managers and recycling plants can be helpful -- let them know that if they ever see any old racks they should give you a call. Sometimes all an old rack needs is a good paint job. And remember, you don't need the coin mechanism if you're free, so rip it out before you put the rack on the streets.

2. Avoid throwing a bundle of papers at the front door of a restaurant or retailer who is supposed to display your papers. Sure, some employees of these businesses might figure out that they should place your papers inside where customers can grab them. But many businesses have a lot of turnover, and the next employee might regard your bundle as trash. Instead, when the business opens, you might have a delivery person return to place the papers inside.

3. If possible, hire a daytime delivery person or persons to walk a downtown district. This person's job might not be so much a delivery job as much as a job to make sure that papers delivered earlier got to the right distribution points. This person could also help with the paper's public relations by listening to businesses who have complaints about delivery and establishing new distribution points. I think it was the San Mateo (California) Daily Journal who called these people "ambassadors" -- a good title.

4. Know your news rack ordinances. Most cities put them online. Look for the municipal code on the city's website. If it's not there, go to the city's Planning Department or Code Enforcement office and ask for a copy.

5. City officials don't like complaints from residents or businesses. Keep this in mind when you're placing a new rack. Even if the rack is perfectly legal under the code, if it becomes controversial, you'll have to move it -- or get into a time-consuming fight.

6. In many cities, competing newspapers work together to install modular racks for several papers. If you're not aware of this practice, call your competitors and ask. You'll have to pay your share for rack units and installation, but you don't want to be left out of the next modular unit that's installed.

7. Avoid inserts. Inserts tend to fall out of a stack of papers and make a mess on the floor. If you're distributing inside a business, the mess might jeopardize your ability to distribute there in the future.

8. Check on delivery people. Make time to personally check routes. With a free paper, it's too easy for a delivery person to dump their papers in the trash and skip the route. Develop a list of business people you can call to ask if your papers were delivered to their establishments. Include a note in your paper that asks readers to call if they can't find today's paper. This will help you determine which stops need more papers in the future.

9. Eliminate stops where only one or two papers are delivered. The more stops where you can deliver large quantities, the faster a route can be done. Remember, newspapers are a mass medium.

10. Aim to complete deliveries by automobile before rush hour. Once people start crowding the roads on their way to work, delivery becomes much harder, and the productivity of your drivers declines greatly. If you need more time to deliver, negotiate an earlier deadline with your newsroom. Is your paper so time-sensitive that the current deadline is essential? What's more important -- getting that last West Coast score into your sports section, or delivering thousands more papers before deadline?

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

Rival sues new free daily in North Carolina

The publishers and several staffers at paid papers in two North Carolina cities have quit to start their own free daily -- but now they're being sued by the owner of their former papers.

The new free daily is called The Messenger. It started July 9 and operates five days a week, delivering to homes. The Messenger is based in Mount Airy, N.C., a city of about 8,500 people and the birthplace of Andy Griffith. Many believe the charming small town of Mayberry in his 1960s TV show was based on Mount Airy.

Many of the staffers for the new paper come from the Mount Airy News and The Tribune of Elkin, N.C. Elkin is a town of 4,100 in the rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains about 20 miles south of Mount Airy near I-77. Both cities are in the same county.

In June, a chain of 32-papers, Connecticut-based Heartland Publications, bought the 9,200-circulation dailiy Mount Airy News and tri-weekly, 6,000-circulation Tribune from Mid-South Management Company.

Soon Heartland began cutting staff, and on June 18 Michael Milligan resigned as publisher of the Mount Airy News and Rebel Good resigned as publisher of the Elkin Tribune after 29 years, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

Milligan is publisher of the new paper and Good is editor. One report said 14 employees of the two Heartland papers came along with them.

A July 4 story in the Winston-Salem paper said:

Employees at The Mount Airy News say they haven’t paid a lot of attention to what Milligan and Good are up to.

“Whatever they do doesn’t impact the notion or intention that we’re going to put out a great paper,” said Gary Lawrence, the new publisher of The Mount Airy News, who is also the chief-operating officer of Heartland Publications southern division.

Things changed quickly, however, when Heartland sued Milligan and Good, claiming the pair took key employees and information with them to start The Messenger, a July 7 story in the Winston-Salem paper said. The suit alleged that the two were planning the new paper while working at their old jobs, and that they recruited employees and manipulated the emotions of the remaining workers "so that they would walk out en masse" on June 18 in an attempt to undermine the two paid papers.

Heartland asked the court for an order stopping Milligan and Good from publishing the new paper, as well as hiring former employees of the two Heartland papers. Heartland also wanted to stop the new paper from contracting with its customers.

It appears Heartland didn't get very far in its lawsuit. The new paper has been publishing without interruption and a judge July 16 refused the chain's request to speed up the disclosure of documents in its lawsuit, the Winston-Salem Journal reported. The Messenger's attorney said Heartland's allegations are false and just an attempt to derail the new publication. The next hearing in the case is set for Sept. 10.

It's a nasty case for a town many think of as Mayberry. Where is Sheriff Taylor when we need him?

(Both photos are by Kate Lord of the Winson-Salem Journal.)

'Otis' says LA launch delayed until January

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?