Scotland: young people to get free newspapers?

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on January 12, 2010 at 12:03 PM

A Scottish MP has called for a free newspaper scheme, offering young people in Scotland a newspaper of their choice for free and for a year.

In an opinion piece in The Scotsman, Scottish Labour's culture spokesperson Pauline McNeill refers to the current transformations in the newspaper industry as "the biggest crisis in its history". She calls for yearly subscriptions to be offered to teenagers on their 18th birthdays to encourage them to become long-term readers.

She cites the example of the free newspaper scheme in France, a country which subsidises its press heavily. In the French scheme, Mon journal offert (My free newspaper), young people aged between 18 and 24 receive a free newspaper once a week for a year. There's a catch, though: the offer was reserved for the first 200,000 subscribers.

McNeill does not specify whether Scottish youth should receive their newspapers every day or once a week. She also leaves out details of who should pick up the bill for such a program. According to The Scotsman, Labour would like the Scottish Government to fund the free papers, but would even prefer publishers to provide their products for free, benefiting from increased circulation and thus increased advertising revenue.

National Union of Journalists president Pete Murray welcomed the plan. "This is positive initiative that shows real imagination," he told The Scotsman. "If we get this right it will be a win-win for young people and newspapers."

Liberal Democrat culture spokesman Iain Smith was less enthusiastic. "In the current economic climate this would not be the best use of government money," he said. "In the middle of a recession there are better things for government to be spending money on than free newspapers for young people."

Although government subsidies for newspapers always raise concerns about independence of the press, this would seem to be a welcome innovation in the struggling Scottish newspaper industry.

Sources: All Media Scotland, The Scotsman (1), The Scotsman (2)