The Baltimore Examiner, launched by Philip Anschutz, the Denver oil and real estate tycoon and founder of Qwest Communications,, will become the third free daily in Anschutz’s chain, after San Francisco and Washington.

Baltimore, a more blue-collar area than San Francisco and Washington, is an experiment that Anschutz hope will prove that the model of a free paper can work anywhere.

The Examiner model is unique: starting from scratch, it is offering free distribution and home deliever to the affluent neighborhoods advertisers most want to reach. The paper is printed in a tabloid format that offers a quick read, with “intense, lively coverage” of local neighborhoods, to people who want a light read or those who don’t read daily papers normally, said Media Life Magazine. One feature that might be an issue or a plus: advertising rates are a fraction of those charged by established daily papers.

What differs the Baltimore Examiner from the other two free Examiners is that it will compete directly against the long-established Sun totaling a circulation of 250,000, compared to the Sun’s circulation of 246,000. The Washington and San Francisco papers print a third the number of papers as their competitors, the Post and the Chronicle, said Media Life Magazine.

The Examiner will publish six days a week versus the Sun's seven, skipping Sundays and its editing team will be significantly smaller than at the Sun.

"All of these are tests in a sense," says Anschutz spokesman Jim Monaghan. "The jury's still out."

Monaghan, while conceding the Examiner's launch is an aggressive one, cautions against reading it exclusively as a challenge to the Sun. “We’re tapping into a large number of individuals who are not loyal newspaper readers,” he says. “The internet, iPods, everything is competition in that sense.”

Although Anschutz can withstand losing money in this newspaper, the success of the paper is a long time coming. Distribution can be a large factor in the success of this paper as home delivery may not produce desired results. Baltimore is a city lacking the convenient distribution networks of D.C.’s Metro or the Bay Area’s BART. “The key is not that it’s free, it’s how good is the distribution system?” says newspaper analyst Miles Groves of MG Strategic Research in Washington.

Source: Media Life Magazine