Cape Town: Free papers can be quality

Dagblad Pers is a four-month-old free newspaper that has just entered the market in the Netherlands. To achieve quality, the Dagblad Pers model does not incorporate any user-generated content and has no opinion pages.

 “You go to a nice restaurant, you see the chef and you go into the kitchen and say that I would like some user-generated content. It is the same principle in newspapers. There is no reason to give people crap or non-descript Metro-look alikes if you can make quality for them,” said Rogmans.

He said the paper had chosen a classical navigation through its pages: news, home, abroad, economy, culture, entertainment, service, and sport, and is a balanced, accessible and easy-to-read.

The Dagblad does not do any reader surveys or consult the public on what they think should be in the paper as they believe that they have high-quality journalists and editors on their staff.

They paper has 24 editorial pages a day, five days a week and has asked their staff to be extreme in their opinion about journalism.  The current problems of the paper are that it is “too serious, too extreme and a little dull. These are the things we are trying to improve over the next summer,” said Rogmans.

Rogmans believes free newspapers are the way of the future. “We are here to stay in this market.”

By Judy Lelliot, Wits University Journalism