TAKEAWAY: That London free newspaper, thelondonpaper, closes today, but you would not know it if you read its digital edition. Will someone miss the lively barely 3-year-old newspaper? This is a good opportunity to “rethink” free newspapers, as their role, content and purpose may change quite dramatically in the next few years. Time to create free newspapers that become indispensable. And, who knows, maybe they will go from “free” to at least 20 cents. Why not?
Free newspapers can fill a gap, but they must reinvent
A New York commuter reads his free newspaper; few editions contain anything memorable to take home or to the office, based on the debris left behind
End of a three-year run: thelondonpaper closes today, making many ponder the question: is this the way of all free newspapers?
Free newspapers also feel the pinch of the economic crisis and the overall dramatic changes that are reshaping our industry.
News International pulls the plug off its three-year free baby: thelondonpaper. Colorful, people oriented, celebrity obsessed and young, thelondonpaper also had heavy competition from such other titles as Evening Standard, and London Lite.
In addition, Rupert Murdoch has made it known that information costs money and people should pay for it, so to have a freebie out there did not make a lot of sense. Here is a recent Murdoch quote:
Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good journalism”
It is all about survival. I have been interviewed three times over breakfast this morning in Italy about “the fate of free newspapers”. Will somebody miss thelondonpaper? Read what some Twitters have to say about the death of thelondonpaper.
My answer: some will survive. But the formula will have to change. Ten years ago, free newspapers were nirvana for scanners who would get on the train and wanted three paragraph stories about everything that happened while they slept.
Today, mobiles and greater immersion into news websites gives a lot of people that as soon as they jump out of bed. What’s a free newspaper to do?
I still think that we will be looking for substance on paper, speed on screens and mobile phones.
But we are not likely to see the end of all free newspapers worldwide. They, too, will be jockeying for position in a crowded market, fighting for readers and those elusive advertising dollars.
However, the formula of the free newspaper will probably change dramatically.
Where free newspapers will continue to be as they are:
They will continue to be compact in format.
They will continue to be distributed in urban centers where commuters congregate on the way to and from work.
They will somehow give readers who read in print summaries of the news that they “must know” (in many cases, news they already know about, but reaffirm).
Time for the free newspapers to rethink themselves, like every other newspaper.
Where free newspapers will have to make drastic changes:
They will have to incur into the more expensive type of journalism which involves first person accounts—-as in columnists, a variety of them, covering many possible subjects (thelondonpaper used to do this quite well, by the way). Because of the emphasis on what I call the Daily Me style of storytelling (as in Facebook, Twitter, etc.), young audiences love stories told in the first person, with a visible photograph of the writer accompanying the piece.
Blogs have inspired a personal style of writing, which many newspapers have not yet capitalized on, in my view.
Free newspapers can capture the short attention spans of commuters by developing some type of cult of personality for writers with whom commuters can identify. This, of course, is something I constantly advise my clients for their daily, paid-for newspapers.
For free newspapers, however, it is the ONE alternative to not being just another printed product out there simply repeating things, offering tidbits of rehashed news, and creating paper pollution in the trains and buses.
What would be a “good” free newspaper?
A good free newspaper will have a rather personal “moment” on its front page. Something to hold my attention between stop 1 and three of my subway ride to work. Something ephemeral. Something that gives me a little slice of life—-could be my life, indeed—-and that I soon forget as I get off the subway, head for the stairs, see the sunlight outside and start thinking work. With all due respect to colleagues in free newspapers who do something to hold my interest beyond one stop of the subway: many free newspapers worldwide are examples of lazy compilations of brief items from here and there, with no attempt to personalize anything. Maybe it is time for these papers to be more effective and show some diligent in the type of product they create.
This is NOT what the original free Metros set out to be in 1999, when the big free newspaper boom took off. At that time, the free newspaper was a sort of “reaffirmation” sheet, a What’s News for the person who either knew it all already, or for those who simply did not care, but, if it was there, waiting and free, would develop a momentary interest in the news.
Not enough, I say. Not for 2009 and beyond. The free newspapers may be free, and, as in the case of thelondonpaper, they may even titillate with tons of personality and gossip stories (many of which the die hard fanatics knew about, too. Surprise).
Free newspapers that start charging?
The free newspaper of 2009 and beyond is a combination personal blog, Facebook, Twitter, Daily Me. Daily You. And that type of storytelling, as we know, costs money.
Is it possible that some free newspapers may consider charging? Yes, a possibility, just like online information will cost us. For the record, I was invited to participate in a project to this effect two years ago. The idea, by managers of a highly successful free newspaper that attracted elite readers in large numbers, was to create a downmarket “free” newspaper, while turning its successful sophisticated product into a paid one. The economic crisis appeared at our doorsteps before the project could go too far. Food for thought now that we seem to be on the road to economic recovery!
Perhaps the days of FREE anything in our business are counted.
I believe that even the most indifferent commuter may pay a few cents for the formerly free sheet that he has gotten accustomed to.
But, first, the free sheets that expect to charge better become indispensable in the life of a commuter. Tough job, but not impossible.
Related story:
– UK: News International rebuffs Chinese approach for London Paper
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/17/london-paper-chinese-approach
Farewell column by thelondonpaper writer Joshua Hunt:
TheMarioBlog post # 371