New boss for amNewYork

Christopher Howard, who was a rising star in the executive ranks of Knight Ridder before that company folded, has been appointed to the newly-created position of vice president of interactive strategy and development at Newday, a job that includes oversight of the paper's online business as well as its free daily in Manhattan, amNewYork. With that title, Howard will presumably become the boss of amNY's publisher, Christopher Barnes, who took over in September after founding publisher Russel Pergament was bought out by parent Tribune Co. Howard was previously head of classifieds for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, KR's biggest market. Before that, he was director of finance and planning for advertising at KR's San Jose Mercury News.

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.

Judge asked to stop Examiner distribution

An angry Baltimore County resident, who happens to be a lawyer, has gone to court to force the Baltimore Examiner to stop delivering newspapers to his driveway every day. According to the Baltimore Sun, Joel L. Levin has filed a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order against the free newspaper owned by billionaire oilman Phil Anschutz. The article says:

The papers are not only litter, Levin said, but when he's out of town, an invitation to burglars. In court documents filed this week, Levin said he wants to go to Florida and that he's afraid of what will happen if The Examiner keeps coming.

"It's not just me," said Levin, who subscribes to The Sun and the business publication Barron's. "A lot of people around me are very frustrated. There's some irritation that we can't control the paper."

In Baltimore's Federal Hill neighborhood, residents have put signs in windows warning carriers to stop leaving The Examiner. "We have enough battles keeping our streets clean," said Keith Losoya, former president of the neighborhood association and a candidate for state Senate in the 46th District. "This periodical gets blown around and just adds to our trash issues."

In a column in the Oct. 26 edition of The Examiner, publisher Phelps appeared to acknowledge the complaints: "If we've failed to stop your delivery quickly, I'm truly sorry. We don't want you to get it if you won't read it."

Similar distribution problems have been reported at the Examiners in Washington and San Francisco, but this may be the first lawsuit that has been filed.

South African weekly may launch free daily

The Mail & Guardian online report that the Johannesburg, South Africa Sunday Times is planning to start a free daily next year. A blogger, Anton Harber, initially had the scoop on the new paper and management at the Sunday Times wouldn't deny his report. But they said that no final decision has been made.

SF Examiner owner may open 2nd free daily

We're not sure what to make of this, but the owner of the free tabloid San Francisco Examiner, billionaire oilman Phil Anschutz (pictured), reportedly wants to open a second free daily in the city by the bay. Apparently this new free daily, which would be called the City Star, is designed to compete against the San Francisco Daily (or SF Daily) which started almost six months ago. The SF Daily has taken off like a rocket, going from eight to 24 pages per day. In the most recent issue, we counted 125 ads, more than double that of the Examiner, though the Examiner has more pages. A story in the SF Daily quotes the Examiner editor as confirming Anschutz's plans for the new paper sometime before year's end.

It is not clear why the Examiner, which itself is a free daily, is starting a second free daily. One rumor is that Anschutz plans to build up City Star and then close the Examiner, which has never been very strong in terms of advertising or news since Hearst Corp. sold it in 2000. If the plan is to have the City Star charge less for ads, in order to compete with the SF Daily, one wonders how the Examiner will keep its current advertisers from leaving for the new paper. Then again, with a net worth of $7 billion, maybe Anschutz doesn't care.

Free papers blamed for subway flooding

The concept of free daily newspapers is under attack in New York by the government agency that runs the subways and the paid newspapers that are losing circulation to the freebies. The controversy dates back to Sept. 8, 2004 when the Metropolitan Transit Authority's subways flooded during a torrential storm. The MTA's inspector general issued a report blaming the MTA for "historic neglect" of valves that would have cleared the water away. But MTA's management refused to accept the blame and instead said flooding was the fault of free newspaper publishers, who have hawkers who distribute the papers on subway platforms. As the Gothamist put it, "It's awesomely convenient how the MTA board finds the time and money to conduct another report to say it wasn't the MTA's fault -- it was the free newspapers."

It didn't take long for the paid newspapers to chime in, such as the New York Post, which suggests that the police ought to be used to control free newspaper hawkers. Some excerpts:

"Next time your subway line is shut down because of massive flooding, or you're stuck on a train in a dark tunnel for an hour or more because there's a fire on the tracks, you'll know who to blame." ...

"The publishers of the freebies don't obey the rules, and the NYPD refuses to enforce them - out of wholly unwarranted First Amendment concerns. The freebie hawkers can legally give out their copies, provided they remain outside the subway stations and don't leave piles of papers unattended. But aggressive hawkers flagrantly break those rules: They go down into the stations by the turnstiles, or even onto the platforms."

At least the Post admits that it is not a "disinterested party in this affair. The free papers, after all, compete for readers and advertisers with the one you're reading right now." And that admission explains the purpose of the editorial.

Free daily takes hold in Santa Barbara

A free daily in Santa Barbara, Calif., appears to be taking hold partially because the town's incumbent daily is self-destructing. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today (Oct. 24) on the new Santa Barbara Daily Sound, which was founded and is edited by Jeramy Gordon, 24 (third from left in photo). Gordon cut his teeth at the Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily News, perhaps the nation's most successful free daily newspaper. After the Palo Alto paper was acquired by Knight Ridder, Gordon headed to Santa Barbara to set up his own paper. A few months later, lightning struck. Much of the staff of the 100-year-old-plus Santa Barbara Free-Press walked out in a dispute with owner Wendy McCaw over such things as whether to print the address of actor Rob Lowe.

Here's a portion of today's Chronicle article:

"When we started, everyone said, 'It's not going to work. This town doesn't need another paper,' " said Gordon. "Well, I hate to give Wendy McCaw credit for the success of this paper, but we definitely had a bump in circulation and advertising because of them."

Gordon said his paper, a 16-page tabloid available at coffee shops and strip malls, has been flying off the racks and advertising is up since its first publication in March. The daily printing run has already risen to 5,000 -- 6,000 on Fridays -- from 3,000. That could double next year. Advertisers, some of them turned off by the turmoil at the News-Press, have noticed.

"They've done a great job and they're getting a lot of attention," said Nikki Ayers, who runs Ayers Automotive Repair and recently started advertising in the Daily Sound after having dropped the News-Press.

People involved in the media -- including some who have tried to chip away at the News-Press in the past -- said that when the Daily Sound opened, it wasn't so much criticized as ignored. Looking a little like a competently produced college newspaper, few knew what it was, or cared. No longer.

"Instant geniuses," said Nick Welsh, executive editor of an alternative weekly, the Santa Barbara Independent, which has also seen an increase in advertising. "Nobody looked at them for a while, but I think they do an impressive job. They are credible, and this mess has made a lot more people take notice."

Those observations were echoed by William Macfadyen, the vice chairman of the Chamber of Commerce in Goleta, just north of Santa Barbara, a News-Press editor a number of years ago and founder of a newspaper that tried and failed to make a go of it in the area recently, the South Coast Beacon.

"He was sort of clueless at first," Macfadyen said of Gordon. "But I think he's done a good job of taking advantage of the situation without being in anyone's face about it."

Gordon agreed, saying he understood little about the area at first, and he acknowledged that his paper's homey touches meant its coverage was basic rather than path breaking. But he added that the worse the problems at the News-Press, the more welcome he felt.

"The advertisers are willing to look at us now," said Gordon.

PHOTO -- Daily Sound staffers (from left) Charles Swegles, Janelle Holcombe and Jeramy Gordon, and consultant Kristina Thorpe, at work. Photo by Elisa Miller, special to the Chronicle.

Metro Ottawa appoints new publisher

Dave Kruse, advertising manager at the Winnipeg Sun for the past eight years, has been named publisher of the free daily Metro Ottawa. Prior to his arrival at the Winnipeg paper, he played pivotal roles at both Mediacom/Gannett, the Province of Manitoba, BBDO and Warehouse One. He will report to Metro Canada Publisher Bill McDonald. Metro is published in Ottawa by Greenfield Newspapers Inc., a partnership of the Torstar Corporation, CanWest and Metro International.

How are the Examiners staying alive?

We were going to write about Rupert Murdoch's entry into the Washington, D.C., newspaper market with his decision to begin home delivery of the New York Post in the DC suburbs. It's a good bet the Post will find readers in D.C. like it has in Florida, where transplanted New Yorkers or those hungry for a conservative tabloid have devoured the Post.

But what struck us in D.C. is how the existing conservative tabloid, the Examiner, seems to be dying -- or at least not growing since it started on Feb. 1, 2005.

We grabbed the Friday, Oct. 6, Examiner. It was only 40 pages and 18 pages had no advertising whatsoever. The Examiner only had 22 display (non-classified) ads, and five of them were for movies. Owner Phil Anschutz owns a national chain of movie theaters, so it is likely the five movie ads were gifts from his own chain or its vendors rather than real ads.

The same problem seems to be afflicting Anschutz's other two papers, the Examiners in San Francisco and Baltimore. Maybe it's the format or the distribution method (thrown on doorsteps whether or not the owner wants it), but these papers do not appear healthy.

Contrast that with the paid circulation of the Washington Times (100,000 per day), which is packed with ads and has an influence on the national scene. When the Washington Times called for House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign, everybody was talking about that paper.

That's the kind of influence Anschutz probably wanted when he bought his first Examiner. Anybody want to start making bets as to when Anschutz pulls the plug?

Fifth free daiy hits streets of Denmark

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- A fifth free daily newspaper aimed at Danish readers hit the streets on Friday (Oct. 6), the Associated Press reports, even though a glitch cut its planned print run by half. The newest free daily is called "Nyhedsavisen" (The News Daily) and it was handed out at key traffic points and distributed directly to homes in Denmark's major cities.

Nyhedsavisen (The News Daily) had a planned circulation of 500,000 but half of them -- intended for readers in the Danish capital -- failed to be printed because of a technical problem. A smaller number of copies were handed out in Copenhagen while distribution went as planned in Aarhus and Odense, Denmark's second and third largest cities.

The newest daily arrived in an already saturated market where local media houses have vowed to keep the newcomer at bay.

When Icelandic conglomerate 365 Media Scandinavia earlier this year announced it would issue Nyhedsavisen, Denmark's two largest media companies scrambled to meet the challenge with free newspapers of their own.

Berlingske Officin, which also publishes several other newspapers including one of Europe's oldest dailies, Berlingske Tidende, came out first on Aug. 16 with tabloid-size dato (Date). A day later, rival media company JP/Politikens Hus followed with a paper of the same size called 24timer, or 24 hours.

Both free sheets planned to reach 750,000 readers per day but the first reader statistics from September showed that dato only reached 155,000 readers per day and 24Timer was read by 387,000.

In late August, Metro International SA which has been distributing the free metroXpress in Denmark since 2001, quickly introduced a free afternoon newspaper in addition to its morning edition. Besides metroXpress, Denmark already has another free daily newspaper, Urban, published by the Berlingske Officin.

The free sheets come on top of the existing paid-for dailies. Denmark's newspaper market is dominated by the Politiken, Jyllands-Posten and Berlingske Tidende newspapers, plus two tabloids Ekstra Bladet and B.T.

Free paper launched in Guangzhou, China

China isn't a place you'd think about starting a newspaper, what with government censorship and the jailing of reporters who honestly report on the ruthlessness of a Communist regime. Yet Metro has launched a free daily in Shanghai and now a newspaper company in Guangzhou, the capital of South China's Guandong Province, has begun one too.

The new 300,000-circulation paper, according to the People's Daily Online, is being published on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays during its trial period, but it could come out on five week days in the future, according the Jiao Xiangyang, a deputy editor-in-chief of the paper.

The article quotes Dong Tiance, a professor with the College of Journalism and Communications at Guangzhou-based Jinan University, as saying free metro newspapers are the new frontier in the newspaper market. Publishers have to seek new growth areas because of increasing challenges from such competitors as the Internet, he said. Advertisers are attracted by the relatively high purchasing power of subway passengers, he added. Dong did not expect the free paper to have a major impact on the traditional newspaper market because it will carry soft, consumption-focused stories rather than hard news, he said. "It will complement traditional papers instead of taking their readers," Dong told the People's Daily.

Residents trying to stop Examiner delivery

Maybe the Examiner chain of free dailies ought to re-examine its business model. The model stated that the paper would be delivered to upscale, affluent families at no charge -- and once those residents began reading the Examiner, the paper could have its circulation audited and then use those audits to bring in national advertising.

That was the business model the brothers Ryan and Scott McKibbin trumpheted relentlessly in 2004 and 2005 after Colorado billionaire Phil Anschutz began the Examiner chain.

But now the alternative weekly City Paper in Balitimore reports that residents don't want the Examiner delivered to their driveways. Piles of the unread newspapers are creating an mess and people worry that they might signal to a burglar than a home is unoccupied.

It's gotten so bad that one man who says his daughter slipped and fell on an Examiner while walking school is now printing signs to tell Examiner drivers not to deliver. He is passing them out free to anyone who wants them (see photos).

"One of the most difficult things we encountered -- and this has happened in San Francisco and D.C. -- is getting stops stopped," circulation vp Michael Phelps told CityPaper. "Part of the problem, he says, is carrier turnover; another is that some carriers are delivering the papers in the dark."

In Vancouver, 24 says its way ahead of Metro

We're skeptical of claims by any media outlet which says it's No. 1. That said, it's still interesting to talk about a readership survey of the Vancouver, B.C., newspaper market by the Newspaper Audience Databank (NADbank). The free daily "24 hours" says the survey shows it's way ahead of Metro -- that 24 reaches 187,900 readers daily, 76 percent more than Metro (which has 106,600). But 24 also admits that it's only the third most-read paper in the market -- the paid National Post and Globe & Mail are still on top.

UPDATE: After Vancouver's "24 hours" printed the article about its readership survey, the owner of the 24 chain,
Sun Media, put out this press release that says its readership is growing in Montreal (24 heures) and Toronto (24 hours).

Free daily, paid daily staffs to merge

Copley Press, which owns both a free daily and a paid daily in San Diego County, California, plans to merge the staffs of the two papers to cut costs, Copley announced today (Sept. 12).

The consolidation of the San Diego Union-Tribune and the free Today's Local News will take effect Oct. 4 and will eliminate about 26 positions at Today’s Local News.

Local News Executive Editor Cindy Allen will take charge of a reorganized community news staff that will produce stories for both Today’s Local News and the community news pages of the Union-Tribune’s North County news sections. Reporters and editors in the Union-Tribune’s bureaus in Carlsbad and Escondido will produce stories for both newspapers. Allen will report to Todd Merriman, the Union-Tribune’s senior editor for news.

“Any decision that results in the loss of employees is both difficult and painful,” Merriman said. “However, by combining resources, we will have more and better editorial content available for both newspapers than either could provide alone.”

Created by Copley Press in 2004, Today’s Local News distributes more than 70,000 copies Wednesday through Sunday, focusing on the communities of Carlsbad, Oceanside, Escondido, San Marcos and Vista. The Union-Tribune has a circulation of about 340,000 daily and 440,000 Sunday.

Murdoch launches free daily in London

Rupert Murdoch's long awaited thelondonpaper hit the streets Monday afternoon, going head-to-head with another evening freebie, London Lite, launched a week earlier by Viscount Rothermere's Associated Newspapers. The timing of London Lite was said to be a coincidence, but many on Fleet Street saw a savvy attempt to spoil Murdoch's plans, according to Forbes. The article continues, "It's the sort of battle familiar to Fleet Street veterans like Murdoch and Rothermere, who in recent times have had to grapple with the popularity of the Internet. Yet while many have heard a death knell from the Web, the advent of free papers may prove a promising source of revenue for increasingly desperate newspaper publishers."

• London's Daily Mail says that Murdoch moved up the date for launching thelondonpaper by two weeks in an attempt to beat Associated Newspapers' London Lite to market.

• London's Sunday Times says the explosion of free newspapers is due to the Internet.

Chicago free daily says it's in the black

This is big news, if it's true. The Chicago Tribune's free daily, RedEye, revealed in the sixth paragraph of a press release that "strong advertiser support has led RedEye to profitability in 2006." We have got to presume that's true, since RedEye is owned by the Tribune Company, a publicly held company subject to strict Sarbanes Oxley regulations regarding such statements.

RedEye is the first metro free daily to make money in the United States. Smaller market free dailies, such as those in the San Francisco Bay Area or Colorado, have been profitable for years. But of the nation's 11 metro free dailies (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, New York (2), Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington (2)), this is the first one to go into the black.

The news was buried in a press releasethat announced RedEye was increasing its distribution by 50 percent from 100,000 to 150,000 copies a day "to meet increasing demand from both readers and advertisers." In addition, RedEye said it is adding more than 1,000 newsracks in key areas across Chicago.

RedEye found success, the release notes, after removing its 25-cent cover price, making it even easier to pick up. And in this age where it seems only old people read newspapers, RedEye claims that it offers a higher 18-34 index than any other Chicago publication.

Tribune takes 100% stake in amNew York

Tribune Co., majority owner of the free daily amNew York, has bought the shares of a minority investor group led by amNew York co-founder and publisher Russel Pergament, according to a press release from Tribune. Under an agreement signed in 2003 when the paper started, Tribune had rights to purchase the interest after three years.

Tribune also announced that the paper's general manager, Christopher Barnes, 35, has been named as publisher and that Pergament will become a consultant. Pergament had made a commitment to the paper for three years, and he left after that time was up, amNew York said.

COMMENTARY: What Tribune didn't say was whether the 320,000-circulation paper was profitable, which would lead one to conclude that it is not. If it were, that would be the story. Tribune said in 2003 that it expected amNew York to turn a profit by 2006, according to a Reuters report.

The U.S. has two types of free dailies -- community free dailies, which are generally profitable, and metro free dailies (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington), none of which has reported making a profit.

Other questions raised by all of this include: Was Pergament pushed or did he jump? Did Tribune hold him responsible for the paper not being in the black by 2006? Or was Tribune cutting costs by booting Pergament in order to bring amNew York into the black?

New York is a highly competitive media market, so we imagine these questions will be asked and answered by somebody at a competing publication. Stay tuned.

Boulder's 'dirt' allowed to die

A free daily launched in Boulder, Colo., in August 2004 by a traditional daily hoping to attract younger readers will close Sept. 28, according to the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper. The new paper was named "dirt," with a lowercase "d," and it was originally designed to compete with the free Colorado Daily, the former Univesity of Colorado student paper that became a community daily in the 1970s. Both papers had weekday circulations of 15,000. Dirt was created by the 33,000-circulation Daily Camera and its owner, E.W. Scripps Co.

OFFICIAL STORY: This morning's Boulder Daily Camera story said that when Scirpps bought the Colorado Daily in September 2005, Dirt was scaled back to Thursdays and its nine full- and part-timers were given other jobs at the Camera. After that, the paper became profitable. In Feburary, Scripps (owner of Denver's Rocky Mountain News) formed a 50-50 partnership with Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group (owner of the Denver Post), and several Colorado newspapers were put into the partnership including the Colorado Daily, Daily Camera and dirt. Management decided that since the Camera's Friday magazine overlaps with Dirt, Dirt would have to become dust.

COMMENTARY: Dust was an embarrassing example of a traditional daily, with traditional daily thinking, jumping into a market that it knows nothing about. It's a little like watching major newspapers experiment with their Web sites -- they're clueless about the Internet, and their clunky, corporate sites prove it. And the Camera was clueless about the 18-45 market. The name was horrible. The content was "dumbed down" to younger people in a town where young people are pretty smart. Important news wasn't covered, but fluff dominated. The Colorado Daily points out that it didn't lose any customers to Dirt -- they all came from the Camera's customer base. Hopefully the Daily Camera staff will take a few minutes and jot down all of the lessons they learned in order to help other publishers who might be thinking about doing the same thing.

Free dailies shock traditional dailies

The Economist's online edition has a lengthy article about the problems facing the newspaper industry and what moves might make sense on the Internet. It's all stuff we've heard before. But the last four paragraphs of this special report sum up nicely what's happening in the world of free dailies. Those four paragraphs follow:

The most shocking development for traditional newspapers has been the wild success of free dailies, which like the internet have proved enormously popular with young people. Roughly 28m copies of free newspapers are now printed daily, according to Metro International, a Swedish firm that pioneered them in 1995. In markets where they are published, they account for 8% of daily circulation on average, according to iMedia. That share is rising. In Europe they make up 16% of daily circulation. Metro calculates that it spends half the proportion of its total costs on editorial that paid-for papers do. In practice that means a freesheet with a circulation of about 100,000 employing 20 journalists, whereas a paid-for paper would have around 180. Metro's papers reach young, affluent readers and are even able to charge a premium for advertising in some markets compared with paid-for papers.

“The biggest enemy of paid-for newspapers is time,” says Pelle Törnberg, Metro's chief executive. Mr Törnberg says the only way that paid-for papers will prosper is by becoming more specialised, raising their prices and investing in better editorial. People read freesheets in their millions, on the other hand, because Metro and others reach them on their journey to work, when they have time to read, and spare them the hassle of having to hand over change to a newsagent.

Some traditional newspaper firms dismiss free papers, saying they are not profitable. Carlo De Benedetti, chairman of Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, publisher of la Repubblica, for instance, says that Metro loses money in Italy and that other freesheets are struggling. Globally, however, Metro has just become profitable.

Consultants say that lots of traditional newspaper companies are planning to hold their noses and launch free dailies. In France, for instance, Le Monde is planning a new free daily, and Mr Murdoch's News International is preparing a new free afternoon paper for London, to be launched next month. Deciding whether or not to start a freesheet, indeed, perfectly encapsulates the unpalatable choice that faces the paid-for newspaper industry today as it attempts to find a future for itself. Over the next few years it must decide whether to compromise on its notion of “fine journalism” and take a more innovative, more businesslike approach — or risk becoming a beautiful old museum piece.

Free daily sparks paper war in Denmark

The Associated Press and others are reporting that a new free daily that has hit the streets of Copenhagen has sparked a newspaper war among Denmark's major newspaper companies. As a result, at least three other free dailie are expected to be launched this year. The new entry is "dato" (translated as "date"), which was being handed out at key traffic points and will be delivered to doorsteps and driveways starting today.

Upstart free daily takes on Dean Singleton

A businessman in Eureka, California, has launched and generously funded a free daily newspaper to go up against that town's 152-year-old paid-circulation daily owned by Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group. The businessman, Rob Arkley, explains in this story in the San Francisco Chronicle that he simply started the paper because he wanted more local news coverage than the other paper was providing. Author Joel Davis says the battle is a "pound-the-pavement tussle between two dailies that are constantly trying to scoop each other, something rarely found in big cities anymore, let alone towns with populations under 30,000." The upstart paper has a bigger newsroom than that of Singleton's. The reporters are paid more and get better benefits. The paper is printed on a new multi-milliondollar press using paper that's thicker than what Singleton uses. Says owner Arkley, "I get tired of the Times-Standard saying 'Rob is trying to put us out of business.' I mean [the Times-Standard and parent MediaNews] are a monopoly in every market they are in, whining like a bunch of babies. ... The first lick of competition they get they scream like they are getting (screwed). ... They are not having any fun."

Free dailies profitable, Singleton isn't

EDITORIAL
One of the startling quotes in the San Francisco Chronicle story about the new free daily in Eureka, Calif. (see above) is the claim by MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton that "No free daily in America has ever made a profit."

He's wrong, of course. He's either misinformed or hates the concept of free dailies so much that he's willing to misstate the facts.

Free dailies have been around for decades, and they've been making money. Singleton, whose office is in Denver, doesn't have to go far to find money-makers. They're in Vail, Aspen and Summit County, Colorado. Swift Newspapers of Reno, Nev., which owns more free dailies than anyone, is making money and has just added a new free daily in South Lake Tahoe.

And Singleton has just acquired a group of six free dailies in the San Francisco Bay Area, the flagship being the Palo Alto Daily News, which was profitable nine months after it started in 1995. It was so successful that the Knight Ridder chain bought it last year because it was cutting into the sales of KR's San Jose Mercury News. If the Palo Alto paper wasn't profitable, one must ask where they got the money to keep it going for 10 years. Knight Ridder purchased the Palo Alto Daily News Group in 2005. No word on whether it remained profitable after Knight Ridder got its hands on it. Singleton is now buying Knight Ridder's papers in Northern California including the Palo Alto group.

Now it is true that Phil Anschutz, owner of the San Francisco Examiner and Washington Examiner, hasn't made money with his conservative dailies, but, as a billionaire, he probably doesn't care. On the other hand, Singleton's MediaNews was the only major American newspaper chain to lose money in the first quarter of 2006.

NY Times: Free dailies growing in Europe

The growth of free daily newspapers in Europe has drawn the attention of the New York Times, which reports that so-called free sheets now account for more than half of all papers circulated in Spain and more than 30 percent of those in Portugal, Denmark and Switzerland. The news peg for this story is that News Corp., publisher of London's Sun and Times, confirmed plans to start a free newspaper in Britain next month, and that Le Monde and Le Figaro in France are said to be working on free newspapers as well. The story also notes that in Germany, where there has been the most resistance to the free daiy trend, a free financial tabloid is set to start next Monday.

The NY Times says, "While established publishers have been dabbling with free papers for some time, the latest start-ups represent a new stage in the development of the market, said Aura Iordan, business analyst at the newspaper association. The publishers had started free sheets primarily for defensive reasons, to fend off the threat from the likes of Metro. But now, she said, they view free dailies as a possible source of profit."

Murdoch to start evening paper in London

On Sept. 18, London will get its fourth free daily newspaper -- called thelondonpaper -- a colorful, 48-page afternoon publication aimed at a young, upscale audience. Owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., it will have an initial circulation of 400,000 and will be distributed between 4:30 and 7 p.m. using 700 distributors. The paper will have a staff of 70, including an editorial team led by Stefano Hatfield, a former editor of Campaign, a marketing trade magazine.

London's first free daily was Metro, launched in 1999 by Daily Mail owner Associated Newspapers. Second was the Evening Standard Lite, which started in late 2004. The third was the independently owned City AM, which began last September. A fourth free daily is "a further endorsement of the free model which we think will be a big and prosperous market," City AM chief executive Jens Torpe told the LA Times.