Danish daily goes tab as 2 free dailies open

Denmark's Berlingske Tidende newspaper, one of Europe's oldest dailies, is switching from broadsheet to tabloid in August as two new free dailies are about to open, according to the AP. Icelandic conglomerate 365 Media Scandinavia plans to start distributing a free newspaper, Nyhedsavisen, to readers' homes in Copenhagen and other major Danish cities later this year, and one of Denmark's leading media corporations, JP/Politikens Hus, has also said it would start delivering a free newspaper to homes this year. Denmark already has two free newspapers — MetroXpress and Urban — both of which are tabs.

PBS' 'NewsHour' looks at D.C. free dailies

"NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on Monday (May 29) repeated its story that it first aired last year on the battle between Washington, D.C.'s two free papers, the Washington Post-owned Express and billionaire Phil Anschutz's Washington Examiner. An update might have been in order. Correspondent Terence Smith discusses the Examiner's business model -- throwing papers on the driverways of high-income residents, then convincing national advertisers to buy space based on who reads the paper. An update would have said that vast numbers of homeowners targeted by the Examiner have complained loudly about unwanted newspapers piling up on their property. That's caused the Examiner to pull back its home delivery. Therefore the company hasn't had much success with national advertisers. And it doesn't seem to know how to attract smaller advertisers. A year after it has started, the Washington Examiner is losing money. For that matter, two years after Anschutz bought the SF Examiner, it is losing money as well. (And it's circulation plan broke down the same way.)

Yes, Anschutz is a billionaire. But even billionaires get tired of throwing money down a hole. How long will it be until he pulls the plug on the Examiners?

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

Metro launches free daily in Mexico City

Metro International, burned by its other launches in North America, is hoping for better luck in Mexico City where it has started Publimetro with an initial circulation of 130,000. Metro has a 35 percent stake in the operation. Another 35 percent is held by a group of investors from the securities firm Grupo Bursatil Mexicano S.A. de C.V. and 30 percent is owned by Antonio Torrado, whose family owns franchise license in Mexico for brands including Burger King, Domino's Pizza and Starbucks.

E&P writes, "Metro President and CEO Pelle Tornberg said Publimetro launches as the biggest paper in Mexico City, a claim that is likely true but impossible to confirm, given the secrecy with which Mexico City newspapers guard their true circulation. Publimetro is the first free daily in a city with more than a dozen active dailies priced anywhere from 10 cents to $1.50 on weekdays."

Third free daily possible in London

The agency that oversees London's Underground is asking publishers if they would like to print a free daily newspaper that would be distributed in the subway system and at 10 train stations, according to the London Gazette. The agency, Network Rail, would be the publisher's partner and take part of the profits and invest them back into the transit system. Network Rail is looking to complete the tender process by the end of June. London already has two free daily newspapers: Metro and business title City Am.

Singleton's lucky he never tried a free youth paper

With the news of the death of "Dose," a free daily aimed at the youth market in Canada, MediaNews chairman Dean Singleton should feel pleased that he never went ahead with plans for a youth-oriented free daily in Berkeley that would have been called "The Daily Flash." Plans for the Daily Flash were detailed in this article on the news criticism site "Grade The News." The Daily Flash sounded remarkably like Dose, which shut down this month after a year in operation. Another free daily grabbing for the youth market, the Chicago Sun-Times's "Red Streak" folded late last year.

Canada's free daily 'Dose' shuts down

CanWest has shut down its sassy youth-oriented national free daily, Dose, after a year of publication. The Toronto Star writes: "Launched in April 2005, Dose was a free newspaper that took careful aim at the 18-to-34 demographic. Distributed weekdays in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa, Dose served up eye-catching front pages, one of which has a Best Cover nomination at the upcoming National Magazine Awards. Some of Dose's Toronto team had already started work yesterday when they learned they were out of a job. Others never made it into the office."

A Toronto financial analyst quoted by the National Post said, "[Dose] was burning a lot more money than they thought, because of [competition for readers and advertisers from] all the free dailies ... And there was no [strategic] need for it because CanWest has a joint venture in Metro," a free general interest daily distributed in Vancouver and Ottawa.

In Canada, several rivals compete in the free daily market. "Metro" papers are published under a three-way venture between CanWest Global, Torstar Corp. and Metro International SA. The commuter daily "24 Hours" is produced by Quebecor's Sun Media.

• Canada National Post: Closing Dose is good news for CanWest
• Toronto Star's take on Dose's demise -- it will be a loss to the art and design community
• Ottawa Business Journal: Dose of reality: CanWest kills free daily commuter paper
• Straight.com discusses Metro's role in Dose's demise

San Francisco Daily launches

As Knight Ridder, McClatchy, MediaNews Group and Hearst are busy shuffling around newspapers in the Bay Area, a new independent free daily has started. The former publishers of the Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily News, Dave Price and Jim Pavelich, today (May 3) launched the "San Francisco Daily." The paper is published Monday through Friday and circulates in the San Francisco neighborhoods of the Marina, Chestnut, Cow Hollow, North Beach and Fillmore. A wider circulation footprint is planned within weeks, according to Price.

"Our focus is on local news and what's happening in our neighborhoods, but we also want to include enough news from the rest of the world to make SF Daily a one-stop shop for people who want to be up-to-date," Price said. "We don't have a political agenda or a cause. Our purpose it to provide useful, unbiased information."

The first issue, which was delivered this morning by Price, Pavelich, and their eight employees to area residents and businesses, was eight pages. The publishers plan to keep it to that size until they build up an advertising base.

They began the profitable and frequently copied Palo Alto Daily News the same way -- with a humble eight-page edition. Many scoffed when they started the Palo Alto paper in the mid-1990s, saying a free daily would never survive. One well known newspaper industry analyst, John Morton, said he doubted the Palo Alto Daily News would last six months. Competitors derided the Palo Alto Daily News as well.

Over the years, as the paper grew, copy-cats began springing up both in the Bay Area and across the country. In 1995, there were fewer than 10 free dailies in the United States. By 2000, there were 40. Today, there are more than 60 in the U.S. and 150 worldwide.

Price and Pavelich sold the Palo Alto Daily News and four sister papers to Knight Ridder in 2005. Rumor had it that they were going to develop free papers for Knight Ridder in other markets. But Knight Ridder stopped all expansion plans in the fall of 2005 when shareholders demanded the break-up of the company. Price and Pavelich remained with Knight Ridder through December 2005.

• Editor & Publisher
• Wikipedia entry for SF Daily
• SF Daily web site
• Peninsula Press Club story about SF Daily
• AP story (Note that the name of the paper and the name of Amando Mendoza are wrong.)
• Bay City News Service report on new newspaper

What do new free dailes mean for paid papers?

The Wall Street Journal did a story today (April 5) questioning whether free newspapers will replace paid papers. Unfortunately for the free newspaper industry, the example the WSJ uses is Phil Anschutz's Baltimore Examiner. The problem is that the Examiner chain has never made money. Anschutz has been running the San Francisco Examiner for two years now and it has had no impact on the Bay Area. The number of ads is roughly the same as it was two years ago (minus the adult ads he removed presumably because of his Christian beliefs). And while he was puffing up the page count a year ago, now the San Francisco Examiner has settled down to between 40 and 52 pages a day. If the Wall Street Journal wanted an example of a successful free daily, perhaps it should have used the Vail (Colo.) Daily, Aspen (Colo.) Times or the Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily News -- all profitable for several years and each an institution in its own community.

One significant error in this story by the WSJ's Joseph T. Hallinan is "The Examiner is the brainchild of billionaire Philip Anschutz ..." Our recollection is different. On Feb. 24, 2003, the Examiner switched from a paid broadsheet to a free daily under the ownership of Ted Fang, who openly admitted he was copying the format of the Palo Alto Daily News. Initially, the front page even had four stories (two wire, two local) and a strip of ads at the bottom -- just like the Palo Alto paper. A year later, on Feb. 19, 2004, Anschutz bought the Examiner from the Fang family for a reported $20 million. Since then, he's done two re-designs of the paper, but stuck with the free tabloid format. The only thing it appears Anschutz really added to the mix was a right-wing editorial page, probably not the smartest move in San Francisco.

More free papers in Spain

Spain has become the most prolific place for free daily newspapers, with three of the nation's four major dailies being given away. Is there room now for a free evening newspaper? Editor's Weblog asked the editors of Spain's major papers that question. What do you think they said?

Switch to tab doesn't work for WSJ

Reuters is reporting that the Wall Street Journal's switch from a broadsheet to a tabloid format forits Asian and European editions has not been well received by readers. Dow Jones & Co. plans to "retool" the papers, but wasn't more specific than that. Chief executive Richard Zannino said some readers feel "there is less of a paper than before." He had hoped that readers would see that there have been no content changes and that it is only a matter of becoming accustomed to the new size.

Palo Alto Daily's editor quits -- or is fired

Anyone who is watching the growth of the free daily industry is probably tuned into the switch in management at the Palo Alto Daily News. The PADN is probably the most successful free daily newspaper in the United States. Under previous owners Dave Price and Jim Pavelich, the paper was growing, profitable, winning awards, busting out new editions and taking chances. Since they sold the paper to Knight Ridder in 2005, and new management took over in January 2006, things appear to have changed.

Take this week's departure of longtime columnist and editor Diana Diamond. According to the Palo Alto Weekly, the Daily's new publisher, Shareef Dajani, says "We both agreed to go our own way." Turns out, he fired her -- at least that's what she told the Palo Alto Weekly. Dajani hasn't rebutted the charge.

The way Diamond tells it, one day Dajani told her he had a number of problems with her work and a couple of days later, he lowered the boom without giving her a chance to correct what ever alleged problems existed. And then he immediately had a replacement -- an editor he used to work with at the paper in Alameda, Calif.

Diamond says the PADN is suffering under Knight Ridder -- the Monday issue of the San Mateo Daily News was eliminated to save money, deadlines were moved forward to San Jose Mercury and Contra Costa Times evening deadlines, and hiring freeze has reduced the paper's newsroom capabilities.

Free daily starts in Santa Barbara, Calif.

The newspaper business in Santa Barbara has seen some tumultuous changes in the past six years. In 2000, Wendy McCaw, who became a billionaire when she divorced husband and cell phone pioneer Jeff McCaw, bought her hometown newspaper, the 45,000-circulation Santa Barbara News-Press from the New York Times. As soon as the ink was dry on the sale papers, McCaw was using the News-Press as a vehicle to attack the California Coastal Commission because it wouldn't let her block access to 500 feet of beachfront by her home. (This Forbes article suggests she's a strange woman.) Key staffers bolted from the paper, some going to the crosstown weekly. There was talk of starting another daily in Santa Barbara to compete against what the News-Press had become, but nobody did it.

Until now.

A former staffer at the Palo Alto Daily News, 23-year-old Jeramy Gordon, moved to Santa Barbara and launched the Daily Sound. Gordon said he got the idea to start a free paper from his former bosses and mentors Dave Price and Jim Pavelich. Price and Pavelich founded the Daily News Group, a chain of six free dailies in the Bay Area, which were sold to Knight Ridder in 2005. Gordon worked at the Daily News for four years, his last year as managing editor. “Free dailies are the wave of the future,” Gordon said. “As more and more people get tired of buying those big awkward broadsheet newspapers, they’ll see just how valuable our product is.”

• Peninsula Press Club write up
• Daily Sound's press release about its launch
• Santa Barbara's weekly manages to give a whole paragraph to the town's new newspaper

Alison Draper named publisher of Quick

The Dallas Observer's publisher, Alison Quick, is jumping ship for Quick, the free daily being published by the Dallas Morning News. Draper began her career at the Dallas Observer in classified sales and later served in several positions, including retail account executive, sales director, advertising director and associate publisher, before becoming publisher in 2001. While she was publisher, Draper was also sales and marketing director of Village Voice Media.

"Alison has a proven track record of delivering results for advertisers who want to connect with younger readers," said Jim Moroney, publisher and CEO of The Dallas Morning News and its affiliate publications, including Quick. "Quick has been successful in delivering this younger audience since we launched it three years ago, and we are confident that she can build on that momentum going forward."

Draper emphasized that the content direction of Quick will not change under her leadership.

"Quick is a publication I strongly believe in, and I have been impressed with its steady growth," said Draper. "The best part is that its content formula is already working well, and I am eager to join with the talented staff of Quick to build on its accomplishments."

Tampa Bay Times goes from weekly to daily

The paid St. Petersburg Times says it is expanding its free weekly, tbt*, to a daily starting March 6. The paper launched in September 2004 as a vehicle to connect advertisers to younger readers, those in the 18-34 demo.

"Since the debut of Tampa Bay Times, readers and advertisers have been enthusiastic with their praise," said Paul Tash, Times chairman, chief executive and editor. "We're ready now to make it available every weekday."

The Times' plans provoked a federal lawsuit from its competitor, the Tampa Tribune, which complained that the name infringes on its trademark for the Tampa Times, an afternoon newspaper that ceased publication in 1982.

The new publication will publish each weekday morning, Monday through Friday, with distribution at hundreds of pickup locations around the Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater region.

Tampa Bay Times will include concise versions of the day's local and national news, with an emphasis on sports, consumer features and entertainment.

Monday through Thursday, the paper will be a 40-page tabloid with circulation of about 40,000 copies.

The Friday edition will be bigger in distribution and pages, with a special entertainment pullout section. Friday's edition will be available all weekend, bringing circulation to more than 60,000.

Free paper now No. 1 in Spain

The Madrid-based, 2.3-million-circulation free daily "20 Minutos" has become Spain's largest general circulation newspaper -- quite a feat for a newspaper that began in the publisher's basement six years ago. In her story, Doreen Carvajal of the International Herald Tribune provides some interesting information on the growth of free dailies in Europe:

Traditional paid circulation papers have jumped into the free market in a big way, and now their papers represent half of free paper circulation in Europe.

Half the papers distributed in Spain are free; In Iceland, free papers have 72 percent of the market.

Free dailies have seen a dramatic rise in Europe, with their circulation hitting 23 million last year, up 33% from the year before.

Analyst likes free dailies, Sing Tao

We don't put much stock in the opinions of financial analysts (pun intended), because if they were any good, they'd be super rich and not sharing their opinions with anyone. Still, we don't often come across an analyst's opinion about free papers, so we're posting this one about Sing Tao News. This analyst says free dailies have "raised the competitive landscape" with other newspapers and that Sing Tao will become a solid profit-producing company.

Hong Kong free daily closer to profit

The Hong Kong free daily am730 expects to record its first monthly profit some time in the second quarter, publisher and property agent Shih Wing-ching told the South China Morning Post yesterday (Jan. 26). One of three free dailies now circulated in the city, am730 hit the streets in July last year and has since accumulated losses of about $20 million. Market leader among the give-away titles, Metro Publishing Hong Kong's Metro made its first monthly profit after 14 months of operation and is believed to have made a profit of $50 million in 2004.

Ads grow at Hong Kong's 3 free dailies

Frederick Yeung of the South China Morning Post says three free dailies in Hong Kong have each seen steady growth in the past year. Metro's share is up 13% to $672 in 2005. In the past month, am730 is up 17%, reaching $36 million, Metro grew 1.9% to $63 million and Headline Daily saw its ad dollars grow 12.8% to $33 million.

Free dailies attracting young readers

Writers Don Nizen and Floyd Weintraub, writing for the trade association National Association of Newspapers, describe the growth of free newspapers. Most of this seems accurate except for one glaring error. In the third paragraph, it says that the first free dailies appeared in Sweden. Unless the authors have a time machine, I think the free dailies in Colorado began before that. The first in that state was the Colorado Daily, the University of Colorado student paper that was kicked off of campus in the early 1970s for its editorials against the Vietnam War. It became a successful community daily for several years, although it has recently been beset with financial problems and ownership turnover. However, Aspen got two free dailies, one in 1979 (which was really a news letter published daily until the owner bought a web press in 1984), and the second in 1988. The Vail Daily began in 1984, too. All of these Colorado publications began before Metro was a glimmer in anyone's eye. And the original typography of Metro looked a lot like those Colorado papers, particularly the Aspen Times Daily.

Denver Post considering a free daily

Media News chairman Dean Singleton, owner of the Denver Post, appears ready to launch a free daily to compliment his paid paper. The Post is part of a joint operating agreement with the Rocky Mountain News, which allows the two papers to combine resources with the blessing of the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division. Singleton got the division's approval to print a free daily in December 2005. Amy Bryer of the Denver Business Journal writes that the Post's move might be a pre-emptive strike against Phil Anschutz, the Denver railroad and oil billionaire, who has bought or started free dailies in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Free papers better for advertisers than TV

Frederick Yeung of the South China Morning Post reports that Peter Kuo, chief executive of Metro in Hong Kong, says that advertisers can reach more people for less money with a free daily over TV. He also reports that Metro is launching a second publication, MetroLife, a monthly that will focus on health and beauty news. Metro in Hong Kong is facing competition from Sing Tao News Corp's Headline Daily and Shih Wing-ching's am730, but still expects to see revenues increase 10 percent this year.

In Hong Kong, free dailies get bigger ad slice

Hong Kong has three free dailies, and they're claiming 8 percent of the city's $1.6 billion newspaper advertising market, according to the South China Morning Post and reporter Frederick Yeung.

Paid Hong Kong papers fight 3 free dailies

Traditional paid circulation dailies in Hong Kong are fighting back as three free dailies are cutting into their circulation, Nozomu Hayaski of the Asahi Shimbun reports. "The three tabloids are now seen as powerful new kids on the block in Hong Kong's newspaper market, which has a total readership of 2 million. There are more than 10 newspapers in the market, from pro- and anti-China papers to general-interest and English-language newspapers--all competing for fickle readers," Hayaski writes.