Anschutz to close Baltimore Examiner

Conservative billionaire Phil Anschutz (at left) has decided to close his Baltimore Examiner but keep open his other free dailies in San Francisco and Washington. All three are said to be losing money, but Baltimore was losing the most. About 90 people will be fired. The paper's final edition will come out Sunday, February 15.

When he opened the Baltimore Examiner in 2006, Anschutz's managers were convinced that they could build some synergy between it and the company's Washington newspaper. While 50 miles apart, they said the two could share the same printing plant while major advertisers could be convinced to spend money in both papers.

What they didn't understand is that Baltimore and Washington are culturally two very different cities. Washington, dominated by white-collar government workers and defense-industry types, has little in common with blue-collar Baltimore.

Moreover, it is widely assumed that Anschutz, who is active in Republican politics and fundamentalist Christian causes, sees his Washington Examiner as a way to influence policy in the nation's capital. On the other hand, Baltimore was expendable.

The closure of the Baltimore Examiner also shows Anschutz's pockets are not as deep as many had assumed due to his No. 36 ranking on Forbes' list of richest Americans. While 2008 was a bad year for most investors, things were far worse for Anschutz. For instance, he's a major shareholder in the Union Pacific Railroad, which lost 62% of its stock value in 2008 — about twice the percentage the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost during the same period. His stock in Regal Entertainment Group didn't do much better, dropping 43% of its value.

His attempt to establish presence in Hollywood also collapsed last year. The Los Angeles Times reported that Disney bailed out on the "Chronicles of Narnia" franchise that the studio had co-financed and co-produced with Anschutz's Walden Media because Anschutz got too greedy after the astounding success of the first Narnia film, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

As Anschutz's problems in Hollywood and Wall Street were escalating, he quietly put the Baltimore Examiner up for sale.

"Initially, we were optimistic that a qualified buyer could be found because of the strong assets of the newspaper, ranging from a hard working and professional group of employees to a local-centric focus that readers appreciated," Ryan McKibben, CEO of Anschutz's newspaper company Clarity Media, said in a letter to employees obtained by the Baltimore Sun. "We also felt that a buyer would be attracted to the market because the Baltimore Sun faced significant financial challenges. Over the course of three months, we worked with several potential local and national groups in the hopes of effecting a sale. But in the end, the economic dynamics that have ravaged the print media industry also prevented a sale of the Baltimore Examiner."

McKibben, in a different letter sent today to Examiner employees in Washington and San Francisco, said the company planned to keep those papers open and intends to invest in their websites.

"Specifically, we’ve invested in the future of the San Francisco Examiner by making substantial upgrades to your website — including a new design and vastly improved functionality that will be launched at the end of March 2009," McKibben wrote in a letter obtained by the San Francisco Press Club.

The web may be the Examiner's future. It has established a group of unpaid correspondents called "examiners" who are posting stories and columns on Examiner sites set up for every major city in the U.S. McKibben's statement suggests the company's focus going forward is on the Internet.

Free daily planned for Portland, Maine

Portland, Maine will soon be getting a free daily newspaper.

Mark Guerringue, publisher of the free Conway (N.H.) Daily Sun, said the Portland Daily Sun could start circulating late this month or next, according to a report in the Portland Press Herald.

The Sun's editor will be Curtis Robinson, a veteran of free daily newspapers in Vail and Aspen, Colorado. More recently Robinson was a public affairs professional in Washington, D.C.

In addition to Robinson, the paper will have two reporters. It will publish five days a week. The printing will take place in Conway, which is about 50 miles from Portland as the crow flies.

The Portland Daily Sun will join a growing network of free dailies that began in 1989 with the founding of the Conway Daily Sun. The other papers are the Berlin Daily Sun and Laconia Daily Sun.

In Portland, the Daily Sun will go up against the 147-year-old Press Herald and its Maine Sunday Telegram. They're owned by the Blethen family, better known as the majority owners of the Seattle Times. But the Blethens are negotiating to sell the Portland papers to an investor group that includes former defense secretary and Maine senator William Cohen.

Aspen newspaper eliminates Sunday edition

With all of the cities struggling to hold on to just one daily newspaper, Aspen, Colorado is unique — this silver mining town cum star-studded ski resort of 5,804 residents supports two separately owned daily newspapers.

The Aspen Times and the Aspen Daily News, both free dailies, have been battling each other for 20 years in the playground that Robert De Niro, Kevin Costner, Jack Nicholson, Antonio Banderas and Kate Hudson call home.

The competition keeps ad rates low and keeps reporters on their toes, worrying that they might be scooped by the other paper. And, after 20 years, one would assume the papers have been profitable, or why would their owners continue to fight for so long?

On December 31, the Times announced that it was eliminating its Sunday edition but would continue to publish the other six days of the week. Publisher Jenna Weatherred, in a note to readers, said Sunday was the paper's "least profitable edition" of the week.

Not un-profitable, but "least profitable."

At the same time, the chain that owns the Times, Swift Newspapers, pulled the plug on weekly newspapers in two other communities as well as a regional Spanish-language paper. And the Times publisher said she has reduced the staff of her paper by 20 percent, though exact numbers weren't given.

"My hope is that, once this recession turns around and things feel more secure in the valley, we will be able to bring back the Sunday daily and our small community weekly papers," Weatherred said.

Each of the papers are tabloid-sized yet have a strikingly grey layout with small headlines and lots of copy. On many inside pages, copy will run for 14 inches without so much as a subhead or pull-quote interrupting the column of grey. The Times appears to have a few more photos sprinkled among its columns.

The staff boxes of the papers show that each has a newsroom of 12 to 15 people. And though Aspen might seem like a small town, they have plenty of news to cover. Last week, for instance, a 71-year-old former miner killed himself after he forced the evacuation of Aspen's downtown when he planted bombs at four banks and a drinking hole in an extortion plot. The incident forced the town to postpone its New Year's Eve fireworks display, a favorite of tourists.

The would-be bomber, as he was preparing his explosives, left a hand-written letter-to-the-editor at the Times reminiscent of another Aspen resident, the late "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Given the frequent controversies and celebrity sightings in Aspen, the attempted bombing probably was just another day at the office for the journalists at the Daily News and Times.

Aspen, a town with a lot of news, is fortunate to have two newspapers to cover it.

Leaving your heart in San Francisco

Tony Bennett sang about losing one's heart in San Francisco, and the publishers of a free daily in that famed city by the bay may soon feel that way. The (San Francisco) Daily Post announced this week that it is pulling out of San Francisco. The paper moved its offices to Palo Alto, a toney university town about 30 miles south of San Francisco, about six months ago. But they still continued to distribute in San Francisco while they essentially built a new paper in Palo Alto. The publishers know something about the market in Palo Alto. They're Dave Price and Jim Pavelich, who started the Palo Alto Daily News in 1995 and sold it in 2005 to Knight Ridder for $25 million.

An idea for Detroit's newspapers

Detroit's two newspapers announced Tuesday that they are stopping home delivery four days a week and will only sell a scaled-down version of their papers on those days in racks and stores. (Read the AP story. Photo by the AP.)

The move is a cost-cutting measure as the two papers struggle to survive. "We have to change the way we deliver that news — not just in subtle ways, but in fundamental ways," said David Hunke, Detroit Free Press publisher and chief executive of the partnership with the Detroit News.

If he's serious about fundamental change, he should consider making one or both of the papers free on the days they're not delivered to homes. While the bean counters might be horrified at losing single-copy revenue, those quarters would be replaced with dollars from new advertising. Free papers reach a much broader audience than paid papers. The pass-along rate is higher, meaning advertisers get more bang for their buck. Free papers tend to reach the younger readers advertisers desire.

To prove all of that, make one of the papers free and keep the other paid. Run them with separate management teams. After a year, see which one is ahead, and convert the other to that format.

Ads in free dailies work -- sometimes too well!

An advertiser in the free daily AMNewYork has been arrested after a scam in the paper was too successful. The New York Post reports:

Raadiya James, 22, is accused of buying an ad in AM New York on Dec. 2 that mimicked an official announcement from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development offering cheap apartments on West 57th Street.

In exchange for a $5 application fee, the home-seekers were offered a shot at studios for $538 and two-bedrooms for $823.

Over the next few days, more than 1,000 money orders poured into a post-office box.

But authorities picked up on the alleged scam and when James came to pick up the loot, she was arrested.

Rapid turnover in publishers in Vail, Colo.

It's not often that a newspaper goes through two publishers in one month. But that's what happened this month at the Vail Daily.

Steve Gall, who had headed the paper for 19 months, resigned "to pursue other opportunities," the Vail Daily announced on Dec. 4.

He was replaced by Steve Pope, who was the paper's publisher in 2005 and early 2006 before he was promoted to a regional management job with parent company Swift Newspapers. Then on Tuesday, Pope gave notice so he could take the publisher's job at the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Pope's move to the Colorado Springs' paper is a bit of a head-scratcher because the publisher's slot has been open since August. Why take the Vail job only to quit two weeks later and take the Colorado Springs job instead? Why not take the Colorado Springs job in early December and not bother with Vail?

The official line is that the Colorado Springs job is a big step up for Pope. But we hear that the Vail Daily isn't a fun place to work anymore compared to the first time he was publisher. The founder of the Vail Daily, Jim Pavelich, who sold the paper in the early 1990s to Swift, has started a new paper, the Vail Mountaineer, which is taking away business from the Daily. The Vail Daily has responded by offering advertisers steep discounts — as much as 90 percent — if they agree not to advertise in the new paper. But the strategy may backfire because Swift loses money on the discounted rates.

By the way, at the Gazette Pope will succeed Scott McKibben, who was the publisher of the San Francisco Examiner when it was purchased by billionaire oilman Phil Anschutz.

Metro U.S. did better in 2008 than 2007

Has Metro finally found the right formula for U.S. audiences? This year the paper has had a successful redesign and appears to be attracting more mainstream advertisers — major department stores instead of fly-by-night 1-800 ads. Metro is growing its real estate sections at a time when real estate isn't supposed to be doing that well. And Metro seems to have more ads than in the past and probably a higher yield per page.

"Metro U.S.'s performance in 2008 is very promising and has improved a lot compared to 2007," Metro chief executive Per Mikael Jensen (right) told Free-Daily.com in an e-mail Wednesday. "We really feel that we are embraced by readers and advertisers.

"So whilst everyone else seems to have a hard time, we have seen big improvements," Jensen wrote. "Our base of advertisers and our yield per page has, as you point out, been increasing during the year."

A year ago, there was talk that Metro was going to close or sell its three U.S. editions (New York, Philadephia and Boston). Jensen put the papers on the market, but there were no takers. Of course the financial meltdown has halted all lending for mergers and acquisitions, so even if somebody was interested, they couldn't get the financing.

Now Jensen tells us, "I’m very sure that Metro has a great future in U.S."

Personnel changes at several free dailies

Metro, the international chain of free dailies, announced yesterday that it has named Tony Metcalf as its Editor in Chief for Metro U.S., overseeing editions in Boston, Philadelphia and New York.

The announcement formalizes the role Metcalf has had since February, when he was asked to temporarily head up the chain's newsrooms after Metro cut 27 positions. Metcalf was planning to return to the Middle East, where he had worked as a editor and publisher, when he was tapped for the temporary job.

Metro's decision to give Metcalf the title of U.S. editor is an indication that the chain plans to keep open its U.S. papers. The three had been on the block earlier this year, but no buyers emerged.

Prior to Metro, Metcalf served for four years as the owner and editorial director of "7 days" in Dubai. Previous to that, he was Global Editor in Chief for Metro International, overseeing the launch of Metro World News, a newswire utilizing Metro's reporters in cities around the world. Metcalf has been involved in launches of Metro around the world including Boston, Toronto, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Hong Kong and Seoul.

"Metcalf's global media background, coupled with his localized experience, makes him perfect to helm Metro US," said Georg Tsaros, managing director and publisher of Metro New York. "Metcalf is ideal to unlock the vast editorial potential of Metro in the United States."

OTHER PERSONNEL CHANGES

Amanda Barrett, who has been promoted by the AP to be its deputy editor for the Eastern U.S. Regional Desk in Philadelphia. She arrived at AP last year from amNewYork. She was the free paper's Web site editor.

In California, two big changes at the Tahoe Daily Tribune, the free daily based in South Lake Tahoe owned by Swift Newspaper. Mary Jurkonis has been appointed publisher. She most recently served as publisher of the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza in Incline Village. Jurkonis succeeds Gail Powell-Acosta.

Also at the Tahoe paper, city editor Elaine Goodman has been promoted to managing editor. Before joining the Tribune in November 2004, she worked for the Reno Gazette-Journal and the Palo Alto Daily News, another free daily.

Legislation proposed over delivery method

A city councilman in Alexandria, Virginia wants to create a "do not deliver" list, similar to "do not call" lists for phone solicitors, designed to curtail unwanted deliveries of the Washington Examiner that have been piling up on driveways and lawns. WJLA-TV in Washington reports that councilman Justin Wilson's "do not deliver" law would include fines against newspaper publishers who continue to deliver despite requests from residents who ask the paper to stop.

WJLA interviewed one resident, Amy Bayer, who said that when she has called, deliveries would stop for a few months, and then start again later. Another resident interviewed by the TV station pointed out that when unwanted newspapers accumulate, they tip off would-be burglars that nobody's home.

Earlier this year a Maryland legislator, Tanya Shewell, proposed similar legislation but was talked out of it by the Examiner, which promised to do a better job. The Examiner also faced the threat of such legislation in San Francisco earlier this year. But the Examiner has since reduced delivery to homes from six days a week to two as a cost-cutting measure. The cut-back appears to have taken some of the steam out of a "do-not-deliver" list in Frisco, though the complaints keep coming.

SPEAKING ABOUT THE EXAMINER, the company has announced that it is closing its printing plant in Maryland that had printed its Washington and Baltimore editions, and will outsource the work to other printing companies. The move will allow the Examiner to shed 101 jobs from its payroll. The Examiner says the move will allow it to print more color ads.

Wyoming free daily turns 30

When the Jackson Hole Daily began Dec. 1, 1978, it was probably the smallest daily newspaper around in at least two ways.

The initial press run was just 2,000 copies for a winter resort that was essentially closed until the ski season started later in December. And the actual size of the paper was unique too -- not a tabloid, but half the dimensions of a tabloid, what printers call a "quarter fold."

In a story about the paper's anniversary, writer Angus M. Thuermer Jr. notes that the pressman waited all night for the small newsroom to finish the first edition. He fell asleep in the newspaper's conference room.

The press finally started at around 5 or 6 in the morning -- even though the idea was to print it the night before. The delivery person couldn't wait any longer and left for another job, which meant the editor and a sleepy salesman had to distribute the first issue on their own.

Thuermer's article continues:

[Then-editor Paul] Bruun emphasized that 30 years ago there was no ESPN, no USA Today, no CNN. Fax machines were rare and the Internet was a long way off.

“There was none of that,” Bruun said.

The product, however, stirred great interest. The Daily, perhaps the world’s smallest, had it all.

“How delighted people were,” Bruun said, “at the crossword puzzle, the Peanuts cartoon, the little synopsis of stock-market quotations, the gold prices. That was fun.”

Today the Daily thrives under the leadership of Managing Editor Dava Zucker and a staff of copy editors and layout artists. Four-color photography and advertising are standard, and the publication covers everything from world and national affairs to business, local entertainment, opinions, sports, weather and art in a 15-inch-tall tabloid format.

At the time there were only two other free dailies -- The Colorado Daily in Boulder, born in 1971, and the Aspen Daily News, which began five months before Jackson Hole.

Metro Canada 'facing real challenges'

Metro Canada is apparently "reorganizing," laying off employees and facing "real challenges," the publisher of the Metro's Halifax edition is quoted as saying. Greg Lutes made the comments to his competitor, the Halifax Chronicle Herald, in a story about four layoffs at Metro Halifax on Wednesday. Lutes said two reporters, one sales staffer and one marketing person were let go. Lutes said the cuts were apart of the re-organization of Metro Canada, which announced a couple of months ago that its Canadian circulation had reached one million, strengthening its position as the No. 1 free daily in the country.

Lutes said, "Local (advertising) is not the issue ... It's national (advertising) ... We're facing real challenges right now."

Lutes said circulation at his paper had increased 20 percent this fall.

The Metro Halifax edition now has five people working in its newsroom. Lutes said he felt confident that there would not be any additional layoffs at the Halifax edition.

Youth-oriented, 5-day free paper to close

Link, a five-day free daily in Norfolk, Va., that aimed for the 18-to-34 demo, will print its final edition Dec. 19. Its staff of around 15 to 20 will lose their jobs. The paper was shuttered as part of a round of layoffs and buyouts to hit Virginian-Pilot Media Companies.

Link, begun in October 2006, had received positive reviews and met financial projections, which predicted it would turn profitable by 2010, according to the Virginian-Pilot. But Publisher Maurice Jones said "we, as a company, cannot afford to withstand those losses in the next couple of years in this climate."

Jones said it is possible that Link's Web site will be kept alive.

Head-to-head competition claims a free daily

A locally-owned free daily serving Eureka, California will print its last edition on Saturday after battling for five years with the town's chain-owned paid daily, according to The Associated Press.

Eureka, a town of about 27,000, is in far Northern California near the Oregon border. It overlooks the Pacific Ocean coast.

The Eureka Reporter was started by a local developer and banker, Rob Arkley, a conservative who felt the town's longtime paid daily, the Times-Standard, was too liberal.

The Times-Standard is owned by MediaNews Group, a chain of 57 dailies headed by Dean Singleton, who was a big backer of President Bush. Yet Singleton's papers are mostly liberal. Singleton doesn't tell his editors to slant the news.

And, oddly enough, Arkley didn't attempt to tell the journalists who worked for the Reporter how to cover the news either. The only hint of conservatism in the Reporter came on the editorial page.

Arkley's Eureka Reporter scooped up numerous awards. It also has a state-of-the-art press that produced vidid photos and ads.

Probably the smartest thing Arkley did was hire Judi Pollace, a highly respected veteran of the Times-Standard who produced a credible product. I understand that Judy was also an attendee at the 2007 small daily conference in Florida. (She is seen here in a photo that appeared in a 2006 San Francisco Chronicle article about the Eureka newspaper battle. The photo at top, showing a billboard on Highway 101 between Arcata and Eureka, is also from that story. Both were shot by Chris Stewart.)

As the U.S. economy hit tough times this year, Singleton went after the competition with a couple of lawsuits over economic matters. The first concerned legal ads and whether the Eureka Reporter fit the narrow criteria to publish them. A local court agreed with the Reporter, but an appeals court did not — and the Reporter lost all of its revenue from legal ads.

Singleton's second lawsuit alleged that Arkley was selling ads in the Eureka Reporter at a loss in order to take business away from the Times-Standard.

A few weeks ago, Arkley called Singleton and said, "It was time to do something," according to a Times-Standard story. Arkley searched for a new buyer for his paper, Singleton said, but found none.

Singleton said the ad-pricing suit is now moot and he has agreed to allow Arkley to provide editorial pages to the Times-Standard twice a week.

The Times-Standard quoted a local assistant journalism professor, Marcy Burstiner, who said she's never heard of an agreement like the freshly formed one between the two Eureka papers, where one newspaper agrees to run another's editorials. While the agreement will preserve the Reporter's voice, Burstiner said she's not sure it's worth saving.

”It was a crazy editorial voice,” she said. “It was actually a very interesting paper, but their editorials were crazy. Personally I don't think that editorial voice reflected that of the Eureka community.”

The Times-Standard story on the closing of its rival ended with this:

For his part, Singleton said his thoughts are with those at the Reporter who will be losing jobs, and complimented Arkley on igniting a newspaper war the likes of which are growing rarer and rarer.

”Many wealthy people who start a newspaper would open it up for their own purposes -- I didn't see that,” Singleton said. “He assembled a good staff and let them go, and probably lost a lot of money in the process. He loves this community.”

Plug pulled on Washington state free daily

David Black of Sound Publishing has pulled the plug on the 10,600-circulation Kitsap Free Daily serving Kitsap County on Puget Sound, west of Seattle.

“We are temporarily suspending publication of the Free Daily to focus on our core products in Kitsap County,” says Lori Maxim, Vice President of West Sound Newspaper Operations. “The Daily is a fantastic product but we have decided to shift our focus to continued development of our online products and the community newspapers serving the Kitsap region.” Sound Publishing has six weeklies in the Kitsap area.

Here's a link to the announcement.

Black (no relation o Canadian-born British former media mogul Conrad Black) also group of 17 free dailies in British Columbia. The average circulation is 4,818 with the largest being the Victoria and Nanaimo editions at 10,000 each. Here's a profile free-daily.com did of him last month.

RedEye gives McCain a black eye

RedEye, the Chicago Tribune's free daily, ran an ad on page 2 the on Wednesday with a pie chart that used a lot of ink. That pie chart gave John McCain a black eye when the page was held up to the light (right). Certainly the black eye was unintentional, but it might be hard to explain to Republicans after the Tribune's endorsement of Barack Obama a few days earlier. Credit for spotting this item goes to the local Chicago site Gapersblock.com.

It's all about advertising

COMMENTARYOne of the reasons why free daily newspapers have so much potential is that they're free. And if they're distributed widely, they can reach many more people than a paid newspaper.

Readers who are 40 and younger likely didn't grow up in homes that subscribed to newspapers. They're not accustomed to paying for a paper -- particularly if they have been getting news from the Internet and TV. Older readers, when exposed to a free paper carrying a lot of local news, will search for that paper again and again. And free papers have higher pass-along rates, meaning more people read each copy than a paid paper. Free papers capture the interest of the casual reader who long ago stopped reading paid papers (or never started).

Ultimately free makes the advertiser's buck go farther and puts ads in front of people who wouldn't normally pick up a paid newspaper.

Free can be a fantastic business model.

But that's not the opinion of Morris Communications, which has decided to flip its Bluffton (S.C.) Today, a 17,000-circulation free daily near Hilton Head, S.C., from free to paid (25 cents daily, 75 cents on Sunday) beginning Dec. 1. Bluffton Today was started by Morris three years ago as an experiment. Morris, by switching from free to paid, has essentially said the experiment is over.

Publisher Tim Anderson wrote:

The question I’ve been asked most since we launched Bluffton Today was when we would convert to apaid newspaper. My reply has always been the same. We did not build the model with aplan to convert to paid subscriptions.

The model was built to rely solely on advertising revenues to publish daily. Every member of the Bluffton Today team had confidence that we could make the free newspaper model work.

And we did for more than three years. We continued to manage our expenses while experiencing revenue growth through the first of this year. But these are extreme times for most businesses, and newspapers are no exception.

Over the past year we have experienced significant price increases in newsprint and ink. And newsprint price increases are projected into 2009. In addition to expense issues our advertising revenues began to “soften” in the second quarter. Our revenue was not covering the additional expenses. We tried several things to provide an acceptable bottom line. Restructuring departments and eliminating several positions going into this year provided little relief. We adjusted the number of pages in the paper but realized we weren’t providing you with some of the coverage we promised when we launched. So we had to find anew solution.

Anderson says his ad revenues are declining. How much more will those revenues decline when advertisers discover their ads are less effective than before? What will an advertiser who regularly runs a coupon think when he only gets 10 coupons a month compared to 50 when the paper was free?

Signs of improvement at Metro U.S.

COMMENTARYThe Web site MediaLifemagazine.com posted a story Thursday headlined "For Metro, the future looks doubtful."

I can't argue with the headline. Metro's three U.S. papers, in Philadelphia, Boston and New York, are apparently losing money and have been on the block since January with no takers. Of course merger and acquisition activity is at a standstill due to the credit crisis. That's not Metro's fault. And the U.S. is in the midst of a recession.

We also can't quibble with the statement that the three papers need capital to remain open. It's expensive to print papers with daily press runs of (and these figures are about a year old, but the most reliable I have at hand) 300,000 in New York, 187,000 in Boston and 140,000 in Philly. Printing costs for the three combined are likely over $1 million a month. The last I heard, the three papers have a combined head count of 120. I have no guess on payroll.

But we looked at a few recent issues of Metro and were impressed by several things:

• The content is more lively and upbeat than we've ever seen it. Gone are the boring wire stories. They've been replaced by staff-written, edgy, youth-oriented stories like you'd see in RedEye.

• Better layout. In Friday's Philadelphia Metro — which celebrated the Phillies World Series victory — the headlines were big, colorful and conversational: "Metro gives Palin a little career advice," "At least we're better than Boston," "We agree with J-Roll: Skip work" and "Slacker Prodigy."

• Friday's edition was 28 pages not including a four-page wrap. While that page count might seem small to some, it keeps paper costs down and lets editorial pour its talents into fewer pages, resulting in better work.

• A quick statement from the city editor about the news, with his picture. This adds a personal dimension to the paper (so that a reader thinks that real people are putting out the paper, not a faceless corporation).

• The ads in Friday's edition were impressive — Macy's, Citizens Bank, local car dealers, movie theaters, a double-truck from Carnival cruiselines and a wrap (four pages) from the state Department of Transportation. The paper looks healthy from an advertising perspective. It's easier to sell ads when you have ads.

• Metro is now placing a front page ad to the right of its flag, called an "ear," something the free dailies in the San Francisco Bay Area began doing a couple of years ago. Again, this is a smart move that attracts advertisers and adds to the bottom line.

While Metro is having money problems, it is putting out a better product than we've seen before. It is producing a newspaper that should be attracting readers and advertisers — which may help Metro ride out this economic downturn.

An overlooked baron of free dailies

Reports about the free daily newspaper industry usually overlook one of its most successful publishers, David Black of Victoria, British Columbia (not related to Canadian-born British former media mogul Conrad Black).

One reason is geography — the financial media and those who cover newspapers are on the East Coast while Black's empire is in western Canada. Another reason is that his company, Black Press, is privately held, so it doesn't furnish quarterly earnings reports, which would put the company on the radar screen of those who cover the newspaper industry.

But do some digging and you'll find Black Press owns 170 newspapers in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and Ohio. They include the Akron Beacon Journal and Honolulu Star-Bulletin. But the majority of his publications are small, profitable community newspapers.

Black's newspapers have state-of-the-art websites, but he's making money with print.

"I'm bullish on newspapers, especially community newspapers,'' Black told Bloomberg News. "I think they are a really solid business.''

Most of Black's community papers are weeklies, but he has two interesting free daily operations:

• the 10,600-circulation Kitsap Free Daily serving Kitsap County on Puget Sound, west of Seattle. Black owns six weeklies in the same area, and their sales reps are able to cross sell between the daily and weekly publications. The group shares the same printing press, back office operations, news reporters, etc., making the arrangement cost effective.

• and a 81,900-circulation group of 17 free dailies in British Columbia. The average circulation is 4,818 with the largest being the Victoria and Nanaimo editions at 10,000 each. Black has stayed out of Vancouver, where two free dailies (Metro and 24 hours) operate, and instead has concentrated on the suburbs and small towns. It's a far flung group, too, with 200 miles between the westernmost paper, in Comox, and the easternmost, in Kelowna.

Most of the stories in the 17 papers are the same except for a few local reports. However, the zoning allows each community to have its own nameplate and gives local advertisers the ability to just advertise in one edition if they choose (see rate card). Similar to the situation in Kitsap, Black owns weeklies in the towns where he has free dailies, so advertisers in the weeklies are often upsold into the free daily. Because of this arrangement, Black was able to say that the papers were immediately profitable soon after he started them in 2005.

Black told the Globe & Mail newspaper in 2005 that the key to making these newspapers succeed is keeping costs low and distributing them efficiently, where people gather. His free dailies also challenge the notion that free dailies can only survive in large cities with mass transit systems.

To read more about David Black, see this profile by the Seattle Weekly in July. The photo of Black is from the Seattle Times.

Paper's redesign copies competitor

A curious thing has happened in San Francisco. One free daily appears to have redesigned its front page nameplate to look a lot like its competitor.



Above is The City Star, a free daily the Examiner started two years ago in an attempt to kill off an independent free daily, the Daily Post. Apparently the Examiner, owned by billionaire oilman Phil Anschutz, didn't want another free daily in town. Recently the City Star has changed its front page design. See below.



The nameplate is now four-inches wide, just like the Daily Post. The Star now has teases to the left of its nameplate and an ad on the right, just like the Daily Post. And, the Star has a column of national news briefs, just like the Daily Post.



But in the two years since the Star and Post have been going head to head, the Star still hasn't picked up much advertising. It's typical issue is 16 pages, while the Post is running between 24 and 44 pages a day.

Canada's '24 hours' puts copy on the cover

Since the beginning of tabloid-sized newspapers, editors have debated whether to put news copy on the cover or put large headlines and photographs.

New York's Post and Daily News are famous for screaming headlines and bold photos that attempt to sell the reader on a major story that starts inside. Today's most successful urban free dailies, amNewYork and Chicago's RedEye, have magazine-like covers, emphasizing one story with a single photo, with a couple of teases.

But community free dailies have taken a different approach, putting as many as four stories on the front with text, like a smaller-sized traditional broadsheet. Examples include the Conway (N.H.) Daily Sun, Denver Daily News, Aspen (Colo.) Times, Aspen Daily News, Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily News and Santa Monica (Calif.) Daily Press.

After considerable research, the Canada's chain of "24 hours" free dailies has switched from the magazine-cover format to one with two stories that have text. It's really a hybrid of the two styles since there still is a large photo that promotes a story inside along with teases along the top.

24 hours -- with editions in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver -- calls the format "hi-speed news."

"Insights from our readers, prospective readers, advertisers and ad agencies set the course for the redesign," said Chris Brockbank, vice president of marketing at 24 hours parent Sun Media. "Essentially they want sharp and fast headline news and a consistent, quick navigation system to get to content they want.

"We've put the emphasis squarely on those characteristics in this first step of our program to introduce improvements driven by research," Brockbank said.

Arizona free daily cuts back to 4 days a week

In suburban Phoenix, the 102,000-circulation East Valley Tribune is switching to a 4-day-a-week publication schedule, eliminating 142 jobs including that of its executive editor Jim Ripley, and ending distribution and coverage in two cities, Scottsdale and Tempe.

The changes are dramatic for the paper that switched from paid to free distribution (with paid subscriptions) last year. Management is blaming the downturn in advertising but also said its parent company, Irvine, Calif.-based Freedom Communications, has not been able to trim costs fast enough to offset that drop despite three rounds of layoffs.

The changes will take place in early January, and those losing their jobs are getting three months notice.

"The new print edition will have two sections — one for local news and a second for sports, entertainment and late-breaking news. Both sections will be tabloid-sized, and the front page of the newspaper will look similar to its current layout. Zoned editions are planned for each of the four communities," said an announcement posted Monday night on the paper's website.

Examiner endorsement triggers firestorm

It shouldn't come as a surprise that billionaire Phil Anschutz's three Examiner newspapers (San Francisco, Washington and Baltimore) would support the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin. But Thursday's front-page endorsement enraged readers in far-left San Francisco.

The SF Weekly reported:

"... [T]here were nearly 900 comments most from locals who expressed confusion and a feeling they had been betrayed.

"Examiner's managers put a gag order on reporters and editors. A brusk managing editor, Deirdre Hussey, would only say 'I'm not going on record with you. You have to contact the publisher, John Wilcox.' Hussey, however, did not offer to provide Wilcox's contact information.

"One switchboard operator says the calls were coming in fast and furious on Thursday when the endorsement was posted online. 'We got a lot of calls and people were coming to the door,' she says. 'There was a great deal of displeasure and people wanted to know if we were crazy. But one good thing, nobody swore at me.'”

Valleywag.com, a tech industry gossip site, also took note of the unusual front-page endorsement, calling it "clumsy and pointless."

Under the heading "Great moments in journalism," Valleyway opined:

"Anschutz is a billionaire Republican and a devout Christian, but up until now he's proven more interested in making money in a post-Craigslist local ad market than in trying to save San Francisco from pot-smoking gay abortionists. That's why today's cover, which endorses the GOP's John McCain and Sarah Palin ticket the day after McCain's "huh-what?" suspension of his campaign, seems to be a classic case of election emotions spun out of control ... Is anyone going to change their vote because of the paper?"

New editor for Chicago's RedEye

Tran Ha, who started as a copy editor at the Chicago Tribune's RedEye five years ago, has been named editor of that free daily, succeeding Jane Hirt, who was promoted to managing editor of the Tribune last month. Ha, 30, started at RedEye and then became an editor on the Tribune's feature desk. Last year, she returned to RedEye to launch its Saturday edition. Earlier this year, she became editor of TheMash, a new Chicago Tribune paper produced for and in collaboration with Chicago public high school students.