News International looking to close thelondonpaper?

Posted by Paul McNally on 22 June 2008 at 10:27
Tags: Free Newspapers

News International is rumoured to be considering closing its loss-making London free evening paper, thelondonpaper.

According to the Observer media diary, the title is no longer being handed at a number of London Underground stations. The rumour comes in the week that NI announced it was closing its loss-making magazines division, publisher of Love It!, Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Skymag.

Press remains biggest UK advertising medium

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 10 June 2008 at 09:37
Tags: 15, Advertising, Free Newspapers, Magazines, National Newspapers, Online, Regional Newspapers

Press remains by far the biggest advertising medium in the UK according to a new report. The Advertising Statistics Yearbook states that press took 39.8 per cent of UK advertising expenditure in 2007 - down 1.6 per cent year-on-year. Internet was by the far the fastest growing medium - up 39.5 per cent - and took 15.6 per cent of the overall advertising pie.

Profit-making City AM looks to expand outside London

Posted by Paul McNally on 10 June 2008 at 08:30
Tags: Free Newspapers

City AM, the London free morning paper, has made a profit for the first time since launch in 2005 and is looking to increase its circulation from 100,000 to 150,000 and possibly expand to a second city.

According to The Times, the publisher made a £47,000 profit in the six months to March. Ad revenues in the same six-month period were £3.5m.

Evening Standard and London Lite merge newsdesks

Posted by Paul McNally on 9 June 2008 at 08:17
Tags: Free Newspapers, National Newspapers

Associated Newspapers is to merge the news and production desks on the Evening Standard and London Lite, the Guardian has reported.

The streamlined newsdesks will begin working together from this morning. Sources tell the paper that the move is a cost-cutting drive aimed at reducing duplication between the paid-for Standard and its free sister title.

Boris Johnson complains over family pictures

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 30 May 2008 at 09:12
Tags: 15, Free Newspapers, Law, National Newspapers

The mayor of London Boris Johnson has complained to the PCC after News International’s Thelondonpaper published photographs of him with  his four children on holiday in Turkey. The PCC said that the “intrusion has caused some distress to one of his daughters”.

Photographs of the children of celebrities are generally considered off limits by the media unless they are on public business. This has been the position since Princess Caroline won a landmark judgment at the European Court of Human Rights. 

Campaign group urges action on London freesheets

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 24 April 2008 at 09:42
Tags: Free Newspapers, National Newspapers

Project Freesheet, the London group campaigning against free newspapers, has written to all three mayoral candidates urging action on the issue of free newspapers.

Around 900,000 copies of thelondonpaper and London Lite are handed out a day by Associated Newspapers and News International.

The group has called for: more recycling bins, spot fines for those who litter, a ban on distributors forcing publishers to use distribution bins and penalties for publishers who deliberately print too many copies.

Losses decrease for international newspaper Metro

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 21 April 2008 at 11:33
Tags: Free Newspapers, Journalism, National Newspapers

International free newspaper group Metro again reported a loss in the first quarter of 2008. Sales were down 3.1 per cent to E69 million and the operating loss was E5.6 million, compared with E8.8 million in the same period a year before.

Metro is published in 150 cities across the world and claims 20 million readers a day.

It reported especially difficult market conditions in Spain, Denmark and the US.

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Thelondonpaper loses £17m in 10 months

Posted by Paul McNally on 18 April 2008 at 08:54
Tags: Free Newspapers, Journalism, National Newspapers, Regional Newspapers

News International’s London free evening newspaper, thelondonpaper, lost £16.8m in its first 10 months in business, accounts filed at Companies House have revealed.

The paper made £8m in revenue, but spent £24m on distribution, printing, advertising and general admin, the Guardian reveals.

City AM man’s disappearance: four weeks and no answers

Posted by Paul McNally on 14 April 2008 at 04:53
Tags: Free Newspapers, Journalism, National Newspapers, Regional Newspapers

The family of missing City AM backer Leonid Rozhetskin have criticised Latvian police for the lack of progress in their investigation.

According to the Mail on Sunday, the oligarch’s mother has said she has yet to be contacted by police about her son’s disappearance almost a month ago.

Man in custody over City AM backer’s disappearance

Posted by Paul McNally on 6 April 2008 at 18:24
Tags: Free Newspapers, Journalism, National Newspapers, Regional Newspapers

Police have arrested a man in connection with the mysterious disappearance of the Russian businessman and City AM backer Leonid Rozhetskin.

Rozhetskin was last seen near his holiday home in Latvia in the early hours of 16 March. The Mail on Sunday spotted his private jet in Norway last Saturday. Later that day it landed in Luton Airport and took off again for Geneva, but changed course and landed in Berlin.

Metro launches new free in Halifax, Canada

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 13 February 2008 at 10:15
Tags: Free Newspapers

International free newspaper group Metro has announced the launch of a new title in Halifax, Canada, with Tolstar Corporation and Transcontinental Media.

Some 25,000 copies a day are to be distributed through a combination of promoters and street boxes.

The group now claims to reach 46 per cent of Canada’s population through its network of editions.

GQ lists 18 media chiefs in top 100 most powerful men list

Posted by Patrick Smith on 6 February 2008 at 11:49
Tags: Free Newspapers, National Newspapers

GQ’s 100 most powerful men survey boasts plenty of newspaper and broadcast chaps.

(more…)

Rivals criticise Ken Livingstone’s ‘propaganda’ paper

Posted by Paul McNally on 3 February 2008 at 10:19
Tags: Free Newspapers

Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs are calling for London mayor Ken Livingstone’s free newspaper, The Londoner, to be scrapped.

According to the Sunday Times, Livingstone’s rivals have described the freesheet – which is sent to millions of London homes – as “flagrant propaganda” and have even likened it to Pravda, the Soviet newspaper that was the official organ of the Communist party.

(more…)

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Early Skype backer invests in Danish free-subscription newspaper

Posted by Martin Stabe on 22 January 2008 at 08:21
Tags: Free Newspapers

Danish investor Morten Lund has bought a 51 per cent stake in the Danish free newspaper Nyhedsavisen, reports German daily Die Tageszeitung.

Lund is best-knows as an early investor in the internet telephony firm Skype, which was sold to eBay for €2.1 billion (£1.6b) in 2005.

According to the report, the former majority owners, Iceland’s Baugur group (best-known in the UK for investments in high-street retailers), may want to export Nyhedsavisen’s free-subscription model to mainland Europe. The same approach has has also been successful with Reykjavik’s Fréttabladid, which is read by 70 per cent of the the island’s population every day.

Its Danish sister title, launched in late 2006, has not had the same success. It is said to be lossmaking — estimates say to the tune of €80 million (£60m) in 15 months.

But on his blog, Lund writes: “We are in business to make PROFIT - just to let you know… We are bringing out a REAL PAPER - (not just a writeoff from the Reuters newsfeed) - done by real top dog journalists - and again backed up by a hardcore sales team.”

Skype co-founder Janus Friis, meanwhile, denied speculation in the Danish media that he would be named as Lund’s partner in Nyhedsavisen because the paper’s web site, Avisen.dk, might be used to test other new media projects he is working on. A spokesperson for Friis has told Journalisten.dk that Friis would be concentrating on the online television platform Joost.

Update: Kristine Lowe has some more details.

Anschutz company denies interest in US Metro

Posted by Martin Stabe on 17 January 2008 at 13:32
Tags: Free Newspapers

Clarity Media, the US free newspaper company owned by Philip Anschutz, has denied bidding for Metro International’s US titles in Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

“Our people responded [to a sales offer for the papers] that they weren’t interested,” a spokesman told the Denver Business Journal (via Piet Bakker’s Newspaper Innovation).

Last Friday, a Boston newspaper reported that Metro’s three US titles were being sold and that Clarity was one potential bidder.

Guardian reviewer berates ‘appalling’ free newspapers

Posted by Martin Stabe on 17 January 2008 at 13:23
Tags: Free Newspapers

Nicholas Lezard, writing on the Guardian books blog, bemoans the rise of the London free newspapers and says he would rather commit suicide than have his byline appear in one.

In his tongue-in-cheek post, the Guardian book reviewer says readers should eschew the freesheets, which he terms “crapsheets”, and return to reading books on the tube.

After bemoaning the “hideous” design, “hysterical” headlines and editorial values of the London frees, Lezard turns to the writing: “[T]he question is not so much ‘who reads this shit?’ as ‘who writes this shit?’ Were I one of their writers, having to pull out 300 words every day on Amy Winehouse’s gastro-intestinal tract, I think I’d kill myself. I would not be surprised if there is an anomalously huge suicide rate among the people who fill up the crapsheet pages with their garbage.”

Turning on the hyperbole later in the piece, Lezard argues calls on readers to thrash a freesheet distributor to “within an inch of his life” and “drive their wailing journalists into the Thames”.

The notoriously abrasive Guardian blog commenters also don’t hold back. One wag notes simply: “London Lite. Rhyming slang.”

Metro International selling US newspapers?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 14 January 2008 at 16:18
Tags: Free Newspapers

Global free newspaper publisher Metro International is putting its US newspapers in Boston, New York and Philadephia on the block, according to a report published this weekend by the Boston Globe.

The Globe report came on the heels of a report in the weekly Boston Phoenix, which had reported on Friday that one of the potential bidders is Clarity Media, whose proprietor, Phillip Anschutz, is better known in the UK for the controversy surrounding his investment in the Millennium Dome. Clarity’s Examiner series of free newspapers are published in several US cities.

The three US titles have lost Fleet Street-based Swedish firm Metro International the more than $10.6 million (£5.3m) in the past year, the Globe reports.

Warsaw metro ends distribution of free Metro

Posted by Martin Stabe on 10 January 2008 at 09:09
Tags: Free Newspapers

Free newspapers are to disappear from Warsaw’s underground system after transport officials there decided to remove distribution racks for Polish Metro, which is published by Agora. The authorities say the racks pose a safety hazard, writes free newspaper expert Piet Bakker on on his blog, Newspaper Innovation.

It’s not the first complaint about free newspapers by underground officials. Free newspapers have have been blamed for huge volumes of additional waste in the London Underground and for causing flooding and track fires in New York’s Subway.