At the Free Paper Conference in Madrid, managing director, Lawson Munchaster reported that City AM, the free business newspaper, is launching in Manchester and Edinburgh in Spring 2009. The total circulation outside London will be approximately 50,000.

The circulation in London will be increased to 150,000 over the next few years.

The newspaper, which was launched three years ago, has reached beakeven and saw its readership increase to 233,000 in Q2 2008, moving up from 100,000 at launch and 170,00 in 2007.

City AM targets affluent, city-worker readers in the London market. Initially the newspaper ad difficulties as it was only handed out in the city outside tube stations, so readers could not read it on their commute. City AM adopted a new distribution model to resolve this issue whereby readers in specific areas in London could pick up a copy before they entered the subway. This move resulted in average reading time going up form 11 minutes to 18 minutes.

The new distribution method is "self selective" according to Munchaster: "people who are not interested in business simply don't pick up the paper."

City AM saw advertising go up with 38% from January to August 2008, although the UK advertising market in total saw a drop of more than 10%. The newspaper has seen growth in "local businesses," but many "local" businesses are in the London city square mile.

Source: Newspaper Innovation