Murdoch may soon own a NY free daily

Rupert Murdoch is reportedly close to buying the Long Island newspaper Newsday from Tribune Co. for $580 million. The transaction will also give Murdoch another jewel — amNewYork, a 4-year-old free daily that goes head-to-head with his paid New York Post.

Newsday launched amNewYork in October 2003, and the paper turned a profit in 2006. It's free-daily rival in New York, Metro, still loses money four years after its debut, and is now up for sale.

One reason for amNewYork's success is that it is supported by Newsday. It uses Newsday's stories and it piggybacks on its ad deals. The two papers use the same printing plant, too.

“We’re able to realize synergies across the two products, but we’re not cannibalizing each other," amNewYork Publisher Terry Jimenez told Editor's Weblog earlier this year.

But amNew York is not a re-hash of Newsday. Newsday published a New York edition from 1985 to 1995, but couldn't get traction in a city with three dominant dailies. AmNewYork has the look and feel of a gritty New York daily in a league with the Post and Daily News.

A big question with Murdoch acquiring Newsday is whether he'll keep amNewYork or kill it to reduce competition for the Post. However, in London Murdoch has both free and paid dailies. In fact, Murdoch continues to operate his free, 500,000-circulation daily in London even though it lost 17 million pounds ($33 million U.S.) in its first 10 months of operation, according to the Guardian of London. With amNewYork, he would be getting a paper that makes money.

Metro CEO laments slow U.S. rollout

Per Mikael Jensen, the former Danish TV executive who became chief executive of free-daily giant Metro International in November, told the Wall Street Journal that he wishes his company would have expanded faster in the U.S.

Metro has been successful in most of the industrialized world, launching some 70 editions in 23 countries since 1995. But in the U.S., Metro has only three editions with a combined circulation of 630,000. Metro started in Philadelphia in January 2000, followed by Boston in May 2001 and finally New York in May 2004.

Jensen told the Journal that Metro made some mistakes in the U.S. by not expanding quickly into enough cities. As a result, it wasn't big enough to get the attention of major advertisers. "We probably needed to come into not three cities but 10 cities," Jensen said. Metro put the three papers up for sale in January, but so far there have been no takers.

Metro needs a U.S. partner

If you're following Metro International, the world's biggest free daily newspaper publisher, you'll see reports later today about the company's first quarter financials. The headline will be that Metro had a loss of 5.6 million euros ($8.9 million U.S.), which was 36 percent better than during the same quarter a year ago.

A year ago, Metro was in a free fall, with a CEO who had one foot out the door. No leadership was on the horizon. A year later, Metro has a new CEO, former Danish TV executive Per Mikael Jensen, who is straightening out the company's finances by closing unprofitable titles and investing where growth is likely. He's even cutting back on expenses at company headquarters. It's the kind of story smart investors crave — an undervalued company on the way up.

The one country where Metro seems to have the most problems is the U.S., where its three editions lost a combined $3.2 million in the first quarter. Sales were down 5.7 percent in the quarter excluding the 12 percent impact from the depreciating U.S. dollar.

Real sales were down 12 percent in Philadelphia and 8 percent in Boston. However, New York was flat — not bad considering the advertising slump all media faced in the Big Apple. Metro noted that a new Scarborough study it commissioned found it was the most-read free newspaper in New York City, a slam on competitor amNewYork.

In one of his first moves as CEO, Jensen put the three U.S. editions up for sale in mid-January. But three months later, it appears there are no buyers.

What's next for these editions?

Previous CEO Pelle Törnberg said he had a policy of shutting down titles that didn't make money after three years. He didn't apply that rule to the prestigious U.S. market. Philadelphia began in January 2000 and hasn't made money. Boston began in May 2001 and hasn't made money. New York, which launched in May 2004, isn't profitable but is the closet to making money.

For Metro to call itself a "global" or "worldwide" newspaper company it needs to be in the United States. So Metro under Törnberg was willing to lose money in order to stake its claim in the USA.

Today's financial report also notes that Metro is losing less money in the U.S. after the layoffs of 27 of its 138 employees. At the moment, Metro Boston lacks a publisher and Philly editor Ron Varrial is covering for New York. Georg Tsaros, from Sweden, is the interim publisher in New York. There are a few other blank spots in the papers' mastheads.

The bright spot in Metro's report was its Canadian joint venture. Sales surged by 23 percent, from $12.3 million to $15.3 (U.S.). While Metro is having problems in the U.S., it says its Toronto and Montreal editions "deliver good profit margins while the new start-ups in Ottawa, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Halifax invest in readership.

COMMENTARY: Metro needs to find a partner in the United States. It should look at its experience in Canada. If it were to pair up in the U.S. with a big national newspaper chain (MediaNews, Gannett, McClatchy, Tribune, Lee, Journal Register, etc.) it could expand effortlessly, allowing paid papers to go free. Free means more people see print ads and those ads work better.

Baltimore Examiner wins awards

The Baltimore Examiner staff won five prestigious MDDC (Maryland-Delaware-District-of-Columbia) Press Association awards — the first for the Examiner chain. Competing against the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun, the Examiner won for its investigative series on the city's homicide rate (Luke Broadwater for Murder City series) (Stephen Janis and Luke Broadwater for Cold Cases, Broken Hearts - an investigative piece on the high number of unsolved murders in the city). Editorial Writer Marta Hummel won for her editorial on the city school system. The Examiner sports staff was honored for its Cal Ripken Hall of Fame special section.

BostonNOW closes, Baltimore "b" opens

A big day for free daily newspapers. BostonNOW abruptly closed after a year in business while the Tribune Co. launched a youth-oriented free daily in Baltimore modeled after its successful RedEye in Chicago.

BostonNOW posted a story on its Web site this morning that said today’s edition would be its last because of tough economic conditions its investors face in Iceland. The following is from that story:

“The death of any newspaper is a sad thing,” stated CEO Russel Pergament, “but the death of a vibrant, flourishing newspaper because of economic turmoil thousands of miles away is beyond sad and is something we never anticipated and for which we were totally unprepared.”

“Our overseas investors are honorable people who have endeavored to fulfill all obligations to this newspaper,” he continued, “but the tumult in foreign credit markets has forced a change in our original understanding and their focus now appears to be primarily upon their core retail holdings. North American media is not even a distant second.”

“This newspaper, not even a year old, is right on track for profits in Year Three, just as the business plan called for,” says Publisher Mike Schroeder, “so this decision by our overseas investors, while perhaps understandable, is deeply troubling.”

BostonNOW’s editorial content, especially its strong local reporting, has been picked up dozens of times by Boston’s paid dailies and TV outlets. The Economist magazine lauded BostonNOW in January as one of the finest free dailies in the United States.

Today's final edition carries a full page house ad bragging about how it scooped the Boston Globe on a story. Yet Monday's edition didn't mention BostonNOW's closure. The Globe will likely carry that story tomorrow.

BostonNOW had 52 full-time and 100 part-time staffers, who will all be losing their jobs. The closure is also a setback for Pergament, who started a group of successful weekly papers in the Boston area and later launched Boston Metro. He was seen as the face of BostonNOW.

Boston Metro remains but in a weakened state. In the past few months, it lost both its editor and publisher. And Metro International put it up for sale in January, but there has been little or no interest on the part of would-be buyers.

The news is better in Baltimore where a new free daily with a one-letter title — "b" — hit the streets today.

Launched by Tribune Company's Baltimore Sun, the "b" will be aiming for the 18-to-34 age group. It is modeled after Tribune's successful RedEye in Chicago, which emphasizes quick-read news items, sports and a lot of entertainment.

The first edition had 40 pages and the initial distribution was 50,000. The paper hopes to have a circulation of 100,000 by year's end. The cover story showcased photos of Baltimore's neighborhoods.

Baltimore already has a free daily, billionaire Phil Anschutz's Examiner. But the two papers will be different in terms of news coverage and distribution. The Examiner reads like a traditional daily but has a conservative slant on national news. The "b," if it is anything like RedEye, will focus more on the nightclub scene than the country club scene.

The b's choice in distribution methods could give it an advantage over the Examiner when it comes to advertisers. The Examiner is has been widely criticized for throwing papers on driveways. In the eyes of advertisers, this kind of controversy shows the Examiner isn't reaching its intended audience. On the other hand, the "b" will be able to say that its audience is self-selected because its readers are choosing to pick up the paper each day from a rack or a stack at a store, coffee shop, bar, gym, etc. That will make a "b" reader more desirable to an advertiser than an angry homeowner who gets an unwanted Examiner.

If the "b" succeeds like RedEye has, don't be surprised if Tribune opens similar papers across the country. While Tribune faces troubles on many fronts, its free dailies are definitely a bright spot -- and perhaps the company's future.

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."

Random notes & observations

AD LEAD: Starbucks is inserting loyalty cards in both the Chicago Tribune and its free daily counterpart, RedEye, Editor & Publisher reports. If Starbucks is willing to divide its print budget between a free and paid paper, maybe they'll spend money with other free dailies. ...

VOLATILE CIRCULATION: Circulation has been going up and down like a yo-yo at Boston Metro — from 187,000 to 135,000 to 170,000, all in a few months, the Boston alt-weekly The Phoenix reports. Boston Metro has other troubles. It lost publisher Stuart Layne in January, followed by editor Saul Williams a few weeks later. Metro International put the Boston paper and its counterparts in New York and Philadelphia on the block, but so far no takers. All of this has got to be helpful for beantown's new free daily, BostonNow, headed by Russel Pergament. ...

EDITOR SUES: Richard Dooley, who was acting city editor of the Halifax Daily News, is suing the owners of the paper, who shut it down and started a free daily in its place in Feburary. Dooley claims that owner Transcontinental let him go in "an insensitive and unprofessional manner" and "without just cause and without any notice," the competing Halifax Chronicle Herald reports. The new paper, Halifax Metro, is owned by Transcontinental, Torstar Corp. (Toronto Star) and Metro International.

Vail, Colo., will get a second free daily

What is it about Colorado and free daily newspapers? Maybe it's the altitude or Coors beer, but Aspen, Breckenridge, Boulder, Denver, Glenwood Springs, Granby, Grand Junction, Steamboat Springs and Telluride each have one. In fact, Aspen has two of them since the 1980s, which is quite a feat for a town of 5,900 people. And now it looks like Vail will get a second free daily as well.

The new Vail paper is being started by Jim Pavelich, who founded the free Vail Daily in 1981. He sold the paper in 1993 to Swift Newspapers of Reno, Nev. As part of the sale, Pavelich agreed to a non-compete clause which kept him out of the newspaper business in that area until the late 1990s. During that time, he and former Aspen Times editor Dave Price went to California where they built the Palo Alto Daily News, which went from a circulation of 3,000 to 60,000 over 10 years. In 2005, they sold the Palo Alto paper to Knight Ridder.

According to a report on the Web site RealVail.com, Pavelich decided to start the newspaper after becoming frustrated with how his old paper was covering the news in Vail, where he lives.

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

Pavelich will be going up against Swift, whose Steve Pope didn't want to comment on the idea of a new newspaper in Vail. Swift owns free dailies that are competing with other dailies in Aspen and Grand Junction.

Pavelich doesn't have a staff or a start date for the new paper. He's accepting resumes at jp@sfdaily.net.

Fines for unwanted papers proposed again

The Examiner is in trouble again for dumping newspapers on doorsteps and driveways against the wishes of property owners. Days after the chain reached an agreement to stop a Maryland legislator's plan to fine publishers for unwanted papers, a San Francisco official is proposing similar legislation there. San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi told the San Francisco Chronicle that half the complaints he receives about litter are about newspapers. And, as this picture from the San Francisco blog SFist.com shows, the culprit is the Examiner. None of the other major papers in the city deliver to homes except the Chronicle, which only goes to subscribers.

Mirkarimi, who is one of 11 elected members of San Francisco's legislative branch, has drafted a law that reads like Maryland legislator Tanya Shewell's bill to stop unwanted Examiner deliveries in suburban Baltimore. Mirkarimi would require publishers of home-delivered free papers to include a phone number or e-mail address that homeowners could use to put their address on a do-not-deliver list. If the papers keep coming, the newspaper would face a $100 fine for the first violation, $200 for the second and $500 thereafter.

Examiner Publisher John Wilcox told the Chronicle that his paper already has a number residents can call to stop delivery and that the number is printed on the plastic bags it uses. He said that the first time 25,000 such bags went out, fewer than 200 people called.

Wilcox said the Examiner will obey the new law, "but it has got to be something of course that is doable and reasonable."

The Examiner has other options. It can pay the fines and keep delivering unwanted papers -- owner Phil Anschutz, with a net worth of $7.9 billion (according to Forbes), has lost tens of millions of dollars on the Examiner chain since he went into the newspaper business four years ago. Apparently cost is no object to him.

It could also sue the city of San Francisco over the law. The risk, however, is that if Anschutz loses, the precedent will possibly create difficulties for more careful distributors who have been delivering free newspapers for years without complaints.

In Maryland, the Examiner and other free papers convinced the legislator who was proposing a similar law to shelve the legislation so that they could have another chance at solving the problem themselves. The Examiner's delivery technique is also drawing fire in Washington, D.C., where it was the subject of a scathing TV report (see item below).

A vote of confidence for free dailies

COMMENTARY
Put yourself in the position of Freedom Newspapers' chief executive Scott Flanders and his fellow board members six months ago. They decide to convert a 102,000-circulation suburban Phoenix paid daily into a free daily. For them it's an experiment. Will people still read it? Will the advertisers renew their contracts? Does it have a future?

They're brave. They're going where companies like Gannett, The New York Times and McClatchy have not gone before.

Then things get ugly. The subprime mortgage crisis spooks the real estate industry. Real estate ads disappear from newspapers. The slowing economy makes it harder for corporations to borrow money.

Despite these ominous signs, the East Valley Tribune succeeds. It has got to be succeeding based on this February 25 press release from Tensor Group, which makes single-width web presses that are used by small- and mid-sized newspapers. The release says Freedom has bought a press for the Tribune capable of printing 48 tabloid pages in one run (32 of them in color).

Look, if you're doing well you're not going to announce it to the world. Yet this announcement by a third-party suggests that the conversion of a paid daily to free is working out. Well enough that its corporate parent wants to sink $4 million or $5 million (my guess) into a new press.

One other piece of information. Terry Horne, the new publisher of Freedom's Orange County Register, came from the Arizona Republic, which obviously kept a close eye on its suburban competitors. In fact, he oversaw the Republic's attempts to expand into the suburbs of Phoenix. If Horne thought the East Valley Tribune free daily was a bad idea, wouldn't he have told his bosses?

We suspect the East Valley Tribune will become a giant among free dailies. Buying this press is a vote of confidence for the future of free daily newspapers. Cheers!

Examiner slammed in TV report

The Examiner and other papers have convinced a Maryland legislator to drop her plans for a "Do Not Deliver" law to fine newspapers that continue to deliver to residents who don't want them, the Associated Press reports. But a day before the compromise was reached, the Examiner's delivery problem was the focus of a highly critical piece on Washington's ABC affiliate, WJLA. (Click here to read the script of the report and see the video.)

Residents who were unsuccessful in getting the Examiner to stop delivering called WJLA's "Seven On Your Side." Reporter Ross McLaughlin illustrated the problem at the beginning of his report by dumping a pile of unwanted examiners on his desk.

"Look at this," he says, with a graphic behind him saying "Make it Stop" above the Examiner's logo. "Examiners piling up in people's neighborhoods. Residents say they are a nuisance. Some soggy, soaking wet. Also a security risk because it says 'Hey, I'm not home!'"

McLaughlin talked to residents who have been repeatedly calling the Examiner to stop the paper, and one even had a list of the times he had called. The story noted that a system designed to stop the papers from being delivered — putting a red dot on a mailbox — didn't work.

Examiner executive Michael Phelps gave the TV station an interview and promised to correct the problem. The story didn't say how he would solve the problem which has persisted since the Examiner began delivering to homes in Washington and Baltimore.

Meanwhile in Maryland, state legislator Tanya Shewell (right) told the AP that she will pull her bill to fine newspapers that repeatedly deliver unrequested newspapers after four publications, including the Examiner, promised to change their ways.

The papers would put their phone numbers in 12 point bold font on the second page of their publication and increase their supervision of carriers.

“We’re certainly not out to hurt businesses, but we do need to answer constituents’ concerns,” said Shewell.

New Hampshire daily switches to weekly

After two years in business, the Manchester (N.H.) Daily Express has become a weekly. "The paper's owners found the community embraced the local news, but advertising levels could not support the cost of publishing the paper five days a week," the Express said in a front-page story Wednesday. The paper's owners have an alt-weekly and a motorcycle monthly in Manchester. Two newsroom staffers lost their jobs in the change while other employees will be reassigned. At right is a full-page house ad the Express ran announcing the switch.

Ex Metro NY publisher sues over pay, slogan

While Metro International attempts to sell its U.S. free dailies, it has been hit with a $117.5 million lawsuit by its former New York publisher who claims the chain is using his slogan without authorization and that it owes him back wages of $218,000.

Daniel Magnus, who was one of 27 people fired by the international free daily publisher last month, claims the slogan "All of the World in less of the time" belongs to him and that he didn't authorize Metro to use it. He says that Metro brass wanted him to backdate an affidavit saying he supposedly authorized the chain to use the slogan in 2007, but he refused, according to today's New York Post.

The suit also seeks back wages of $218,000 plus a 25 percent penalty charge. He claims the company cooked up the claim that he was let go "for cause." Magnus also says he should have been given a $150,000 bonus for his 2006 work instead of the $25,000 he received. The suit said Magnus was paid a base salary of $300,000 a year. Metro isn't commenting on the suit.

Baltimore Sun will launch RedEye-like tab

The Tribune Co., which has successful free dailies in Chicago and New York, plans to launch another one in Baltimore on April 14. The Tribune's Baltimore Sun will publish a free daily called b (that's right, the title is a single lowercase letter) that will target young adults like the company's successful RedEye does in Chicago. In fact, it plans to use copy from RedEye.

A few years ago, the Sun was Baltimore's only daily. That changed in 2006 when billionaire Phil Anschutz brought his Examiner there. Then a week ago another billionaire, Mort Zuckerman, announced he would be starting a Baltimore edition of the New York Daily News. Obviously there are differences between these papers. For instance, the Examiner is free and thrown on driveways (which has become a controversial practice) while the Daily News presumably plans to charge readers.

On the other hand, the b will be distributed free weekdays in newspaper boxes, restaurants, bars, coffee shops and college campuses, according to a story in the Sun. That's how RedEye and the Metro chain (Boston, Philly, New York) do it. The circulation will start at 50,000 copies a day and increase to 100,000 by the end of the year.

The new paper will be “a smart, fun and free daily conversation about readers’ headlines, their neighborhoods, their friends, their hangouts, their hang-ups, their opinions, their music, their sports and their interests,” said Baltimore Sun Media Group Director of Content Development Monty Cook, who headed the team that developed the concept.

A press release from the Sun said:

A newly recruited team of multimedia-savvy journalists and bloggers, led by Editor Anne Tallent, 33, will create original content for the print and online editions of b, with additional material from sister Tribune publications like RedEye. There will be extensive entertainment and nightlife content and listings from Baltimore Metromix.com, another [Baltimore Sun Media Group] young adult site, along with video, podcasts, music downloads and other multimedia.

But the best reading in b and on bthesite.com may well come from its readers. Both the tab and the website will have multiple channels for readers not just to give feedback, but to submit their own stories, blogs, photos and video. Tallent and her team expect that eventually this user-generated content will make up as much as a third of the publication.

Tallent was previously a features editor for the Baltimore Sun. Brad Howard, previously a circulation executive at the Sun, has been named general manager of the b and Amy Kowal will lead the sales team.

The new paper will be located in a separate building from the Sun, its former Baltimore County bureau in Towson, Md., close to several of the area's larger college campuses, according to a memo from Sun Publisher Tim Ryan.

A big advantage for the b is that its staff can draw upon the experience of the RedEye crew in Chicago. RedEye started in 2002 and became profitable in 2006. It has captured the 18- to 34-year-old demo for the Tribune Co. while hurting the tabloid-sized Chicago Sun-Times.

The staff of the new paper is already having fun with its one letter name. The press release announcing the paper's launch said the ad reps will be part of the "b-2-b" sales team. And the release ended with "b hits newsstands April 14. b ready!"

Four people put out new free daily in Utah

"This is a tabloid that we wanted to talk to the reader, and not at them," explains Josh Awtry, the editor behind The Buzz, the Salt Lake Tribune's new afternoon free daily. "And hopefully, readers can see that difference right off the bat. Serious headlines are written with weight. . . . And we have a lot more fun in the tone of our lighter stories, too."

Connie Coyne, the Reader Advocate at the Tribune, wrote this piece Monday about The Buzz. She writes:

"Designed to be read in 20 minutes — the average time for a rider on TRAX (the local light rail system) — the publication boils down the best of breaking national and world news, local breaking news, business, fun facts, puzzles and sports. ... In order to make sure a staff of four people could produce this five days a week, the section size is limited and the individual pages are the same every day. There are defined spaces for advertisements and so much space for stories, photos, graphics and puzzles."

Tribune Co. will likely spare RedEye

CORRECTION
The item I posted here Wednesday headlined "Tribune Co. cuts include RedEye" was wrong. I could blame it on an AP story, but I should have checked with RedEye publisher Brad Moore first.

EDITORIAL
When I saw the AP story about how the Tribune Company was going to supposedly cut staff from all of its products, including RedEye, I thought "That's nuts! RedEye is Tribune's ticket to the future!"

Major metro newspapers like the Chicago Tribune long ago lost the 18-39 crowd to TV. RedEye delivers that demo to national advertisers. RedEye, along with BostonNow, amNewYork, (Tampa-St. Pete's) *tbt, (Dallas) Quick, and a few others I could name are newspapers that people in that age group read. These papers have incredibly small return rates. We need more of them. And we need for those papers to print more copies each day. They could easily dominate their markets in terms of sheer numbers.

The following is directed to Sam Zell, the new boss at Tribune: You need to consider replicating RedEye in other markets -- South Florida, Baltimore-Washington, New Jersey, Atlanta ... just a few that come to mind.

MetroMix Los Angeles was a drop in the bucket -- a 100,000 circulation weekly in a city of 9 million. Who cares? If you're going to have an impact, print more papers, publish every day and report what the heck happened yesterday. That gets people to pick it up. It's old fashioned journalism but edited more tightly for the time-compressed reader of today.

You can cover music, movies, video games, etc., but also give them crime, sex, celebrities and powerbrokers doing bad things -- the stuff of daily newspapers since the days of the penny press. Young people will eat it up -- particularly if you toss out the AP Stylebook and write it with words these readers use in conversation.

Look, I know your consultants are saying that the Internet is the future. The Internet is wonderful, but print will always exist. People like to hold newspapers and books in their hands. Give them something they want to hold. Something they want to grab every morning. Something that's so essential to their lives that they willingly walk several blocks to get it every morning.

I'm glad you're not cutting RedEye. But you ought to be pouring money into it and funding similar papers in other markets. It is the salvation of the Tribune Co.

LA Times launches clone of RedEye

The Los Angeles Times has rolled out its long expected version of the Chicago RedEye, Chicago's successful free daily oriented at the 18-to39 demo.

But it's a weekly, not a daily.

MetroMix Los Angeles hit the streets yesterday with an initial circulation of 100,000 -- a drop in the bucket for a city with a population of 9.9 million. But there are early signs that the circulation will increase if MetroMix succeeds at reaching young readers who don't pick up the LA Times every morning.

"This is something for the Los Angeles Times that's really trying to reach a demo that we haven't before," Rich Stepan, the new publication's general manager, told Adage.com.

Both the LA Times and Chicago Tribune are part of the Tribune Co., which went private last year and is now led by real estate titan Sam Zell. On the same day MetroMix premiered, Zell announced job cuts likely to total 400 to 500 including 100-150 at the LA Times.

The Times says the new publication is based on its MetroMix website, and many of the articles in the first edition were teasers that directed readers back to that site. One of the new publication's features is "Ask A Comic," borrowing somewhat from the "Ask a Mexican" column in the LA Weekly, which will be MetroMix's rival.

The Times accomplishes several things with MetroMix. It stops a youth-oriented free daily from entering the LA market. It also will allow the Times to sell younger demos than its current paper, which has been losing ads and readers for years. It also gives a boost to the MetroMix website. While we don't have figures for that website, newspaper websites in general have seen their growth rates level off in the past few years. MetroMix may become a prototype Tribune can use in other markets where its papers need help reaching younger readers, such as South Florida, Baltimore and Hartford, Conn. And if things work out well, MetroMix could become a daily, giving advertisers more opportunities to reach these young readers.

RedEye isn't spared from Tribune cuts

See correction above. Tribune Co. will likely spare RedEye from cuts, according to Publisher Brad Moore. The original, incorrect item follows.

The Tribune Co. announced today that it will be cutting hundreds of jobs at the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and even its profitable Chicago free daily RedEye. AP is quoting internal memos as saying 100 jobs will be cut in Chicago and 100 to 150 in Los Angeles. Cuts in Chicago are expected to come from the Tribune, as well as Hoy in Chicago, RedEye, Chicago Magazine and online products such as ChicagoTribune.com, according to Chicago Tribune Media Group spokesman Michael Dizon. The group has about 3,000 employees, Dizon said. Chief executive Sam Zell said in a memo to employees that "while I will do everything in my power to drive, pull and drag this company forward, I can't promise we won't see additional position eliminations in the future, if we continue at our current rate of cash flow decline. ... But, make no mistake. This is not my ultimate strategy for our company. I believe we can achieve greatness. I have staked my reputation on it."

More competition in Baltimore

The paid circulation Baltimore Sun and the free Baltimore Examiner will soon get a new rival -- the New York Daily News plans to enter the market with a Baltimore edition, according to the Washington-based website DCRTV. It won't be free but fairly inexpensive at $1.99 per week for home subscribers. The match-up pits Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman against Sun owner Sam Zell and billionaire Phil Anschutz, owner of the struggling Examiner chain.

Metro Toronto's founder heads to Halifax

Greg Lutes, who was Metro Toronto's first publisher and got that free daily going during a four-year stint, has been named publisher of Metro's new Halifax edition on Canada's Atlantic coast.

The Halifax paper will start on Thursday. It replaces the Halifax Daily News, which closed on Monday after suffering millions of dollars in losses, according to a report in the competing Halifax Chronicle Herald. Lutes left Metro Toronto in 2004 to take on the role of Publisher of the Moncton Times & Transcript. Prior to joining Metro Toronto, he also worked for several leading media companies in a variety of senior sales and management roles.

"It is very exciting to be back with the Metro family. Halifax, with its young, upwardly mobile population is the ideal market for the free daily -- Metro," Lutes said in a news release from Metro.

Turnover plagues California paper

The general manager of billionaire Phil Anschutz's San Francisco City Star has left the 15-month-old paper. No replacement has been named for Humberto Najar, 38. Najar replaced founding publisher John Gollin, who stopped coming to work a month after the paper started. The City Star is an offshoot of Anschutz's San Francisco Examiner. We're told that most of the City Star's original staff has resigned including news editor Mike Krolak; editorial production editor Claudette Langley, advertorial editor Talia Salem and a number of sales reps.

Paid daily closes, replaced with free daily

Canadian printing giant Transcontinental announced today that it is pulling the plug on its 20,000-circulation Daily News in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and will replace it on Thursday with a free daily bearing the Metro label. Transcontinental will publish the new paper in a partnership with Torstar Corp and Metro International. The three companies have a similar partnership in Montreal.

The new paper should be more profitable because it will have fewer employees — about 20, compared to the 100 who put out the Daily News. Transcontinental senior vice president Marc-Noel Ouellette was quoted by the CanWest News Service as saying he only expects 65 workers will actually lose their jobs since some will be hired by his company's weekly papers in the region.

Ouellette said the new paper will be published five days a week instead of seven, and will have a count of 20 to 24 pages per issue compared with the 56 to 60 pages the Daily News had been publishing.

Metro has good news, bad news

Metro International is back in the black with a $5.1 million profit in the fourth quarter. While that is a 56 percent decrease from the same quarter in 2006, the chain's sales were up 12 percent -- from $124 million to $139 million. (Click on graphic for details.)

That's the good news. The bad news is that company suffered a $28 million loss in 2007 compared to a net profit of $13 million in 2006. And that's probably the headline you'll see in the financial media.

But with the gains in the fourth quarter — its first quarter with former Danish TV executive Per Mikael Jensen as chief executive — Metro is turning a corner.

Metro did better in France, Italy, Chile, Hong Kong and Canada. The company's problems are in Spain and the U.S.

Metro has put its three U.S. papers — Boston, New York and Philadelphia — up for sale, and not a minute too soon. A statement from Metro says its fourth quarter in the U.S. was "very disappointing" following good revenue growth in October.

In the fourth quarter (October-December), Metro Boston had $2.3 million in sales, Philadelphia $2.4 million and New York $3.5 million. During the same period, the three papers had a combined loss of $2.8 million. For the year, Metro had combined sales of $34 million and a loss of $12 million in the U.S.

To cut costs, Metro is combining operations at the three papers, which previously were somewhat independent of one another. Those three papers remain up for sale, but Jensen wouldn't comment on how the bidding is going. We have reported previously that billionaire oilman Phil Anschutz, owner of the struggling Examiner chain, isn't bidding, but BostonNOW owner 365 Media (Iceland's phone company) was interested.

While Metro has not made a profit in the U.S., Jensen said his chain is doing better in Canada because it has gone coast-to-coast and has become a factor in the national advertising market. He admitted that the same could not be said for Metro in the U.S., which has a presence in only three markets.

But Metro had some eyepopping news to report:

"Our joint venture operations have delivered an additional $0.3m EBIT (Earnigns before interest and taxes) in Q4 including a quarterly profit in Brazil after only eight months of operation. The improvement arises from the operations in Mexico, Korea and Canada which all continue to deliver improving profits. Canada's sales have increased 53 percent in Q407 versus 2006 and it is now the second largest Metro operation in terms of revenue."

Salt Lake City gets free afternoon paper

The Salt Lake Tribune's new afternoon free daily, The Buzz, premiered Friday, February 1. The plan is for hawkers to pass it out between 3:30 and 6:30 weekdays. It goes to press at 12:30.

Judging from the first issue, The Buzz will use one photo for the cover to emphasize its main story, though there were teases at the bottom for other stories. The first edition was 24 pages. It's main story was on the death of LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley. The other stories were three paragraphs or less. The sections included "the primer," "the city," "the wire," "sports & rec," "finance," and "twilight."

The Buzz has been in the works for several months, though its working title was "The Flash." The paper will help the Tribune grab at the 18-to-34 demographic while making it less likely that another free daily would start in the growing Salt Lake City market. The Tribune is owned by MediaNews Group, the Denver-based chain headed by Dean Singleton, who has previously criticized the free daily concept.