Free papers are bringing down their owners

It is true - as Fenton goes onto mention - that publishers, such as the UK-listed Mecom with operations in Central Europe, as well as Scandinavia, not to mention Swedish-owned Metro International have been particularly hit hard by the economic crisis, made worse by readers moving online. This has, of course, had a knock-on effect on advertisers, who are ditching print ads in favour of online ones, which are both cheaper and likely to reach more audiences.

In the UK, Fenton notes that the Trinity Mirror and competitor Johnston Press have a portfolio of 233 free papers between them - with both companies having recently released "dismal results".

However, the view that paid-for titles are faring better than freesheets isn't shared by Spain's Arsenio Escolar, editor of free Spanish daily, 20 Minutos. On the contrary, as the Editors Weblog covered in an article earlier this month, he strongly believes that it is in fact free papers which are better equipped to deal with the recession.

Escolar has previously said that it is wrong to blame free titles for the demise of the paid-for newspaper, and whilst neither Fenton nor Bailey make this claim, there is a sense that newspaper owners would today have it better without these freesheets.

The Editors Weblog is sceptical. The ongoing recession and the radical changes within the industry - including consumer behaviour and the emergence of new technologies - have resulted in a domino effect which has reverberated around the industry, indiscriminately claiming one print victim after another, whether paid-for or free. That is not to say that there are not some groups that would be able to withstand these affects better, were it not for their range of free dailies, but it is not necessarily the rule.

Fenton concludes his article by introducing Simon Baker, an analyst for Credit Suisse and his suggestion that European newspapers must increase their cover prices if they are to survive the downturn. 

"Free papers were successful against paid-for incumbents because of their cheapness to produce. Nothing, however, that print has so far been able to think of is anything like as nimble as the internet" says Fenton.

It seems less and less likely that print alone will be able to compete with the internet, nor should it. Instead, newspapers should be looking to work with the internet and to see how it may be used to their advantage; until papers figure out that the internet is not the enemy but perhaps the answer to their financial woes, the credit crisis will continue to claim more print victims.


Sources: FT.com ,