The Giveaway Scoop

"Giving It Away" by John Morton, in American Journalism Review (Jan.–Feb. 2001), Univ. of Maryland, 1117 Journalism Bldg., College Park, Md. 20742–7111.

In New York, the Daily News has been giving away an afternoon edition, the Express, at subway stations, bus stops, and commuter train depots; in Philadelphia, commuters in the transit system have been getting a free daily called the Metro. This trend—if it is one—flies in the face of conventional wisdom, observes newspaper analyst Morton.

Only a handful of the 1,483 daily newspapers in the United States are given away to readers, even though many of the 8,138 weekly newspapers in the country are. "There seems to be a dichotomy in the attitude of advertisers toward paid and free newspapers," Morton explains. "Paid dailies are attractive, but not free ones, and free weeklies, he says, are attractive, but not paid ones (at least for major advertisers)." The free weeklies do well mainly in the suburbs, where they can offer advertisers blanket "coverage" of generally affluent households.

Why the difference? In a word, tradition, says Morton. Dailies "have always charged, and advertisers have always used them on the logical grounds that anybody who pays money for a newspaper is going to read it." During the past few decades, however, dailies failed to expand their paid circulation to keep pace with growing population, especially in the suburbs. Free weeklies sprang up, offering low advertising rates. Though the weeklies, with no circulation revenue, "tend to be only half as profitable as paid dailies... they do make money," Morton notes.

He suspects that the Daily News decided to give away the boiled-down Express edition in the hope that once exposed to it, commuters would start putting down 50 cents for "the real thing." (If the rival New York Post’s swift response of cutting its 50-cent price in half lures readers away from the Daily News, observes Morton, the Express move "could turn out to be a huge tactical mistake.")

Meanwhile, the Metro in Philadelphia claims a daily distribution of 125,000, but advertising sales—especially to the all-important big local retailers—have been "disappointing," says Morton.

The most likely places for free dailies to prosper, in his view, are not large metropolitan areas but affluent small towns that do not have a paid daily. The resort town of Aspen, Colorado, full of wealthy residents and visitors, has had two free dailies—the Aspen Daily News (distribution 12,100) and the Aspen Times (13,865)—for years.