Free News

I’ve been reading a couple of stories recently about the proliferation of free newspapers. I hadn’t thought much of it, and certainly hadn’t thought of making a long, boring post out of it, until the NY Times article linked at the bottom reminded me once again.

In short, advertising drives news media profits whether it be online, print, TV or radio (have I left anything out?). Online media is slowly eating away more and more of that advertising pie, but one way traditional papers may have to compete to keep consumers for their advertisers is going to be the abolition of a newspaper’s cover price. It’s already worked for some.

In Brisbane we have the Brisbane News, the suburban Quest Newspapers, as well as music scene magazines timeoff and Rave, amongst others. I’m not sure about the music mags, since I don’t read them a whole lot, but the Brisbane News and Quest papers are stacked full of advertising. That’s no surprise. The ability to make them free is only because of the proliferation of advertising.

For regular paid newspapers in Queensland like The Courier Mail or The Australian, the cover price – of $1.00 and $1.20 respectively (if memory serves correct) – doesn’t even cover the cost of the plain news sheet, let alone the ink, wages and other operating costs.

The Australian is again running a $15 subscription offer at my university for the whole year. I paid this at the start of the year, got my blue card, and Monday to Friday I can show that card to pick up the paper from any newsagent on campus. If I did this every day possible during the two semesters I would be paying about $0.10 per paper. I’m also supposed to get The Weekend Australian delivered as part of the deal, which would reduce that cost again. It’s obvious then that there is no real cover-price profit for the organisation, but instead it’s an attempt to attract long-term consumers for their advertisers.

So if they recognise it’s more consumers for their advertisers they’re chasing rather than any profit from cover price, why have a cover price at all?

At the moment they don’t really need to compete with a free paper, but in Europe and other countries the free daily is making inroads into the traditional market. There is an argument, although a flimsy one, that a cover price of any value gives that paper some form of legitimacy in the minds of people who feel they pay more for quality.

But that’s not always the case in today’s market (cheap and easy joke alert) because you pay for Microsoft products, do you not? Open-source, free software is a good example – people design software and make it freely available for manipulation, distribution, copying and personal use. Sure, some of it’s no good, but there are a lot of free programs out there that provide people with as good, or better, quality than programs you would pay for without even thinking about it.

People know the news is changing, and always has done. Print, radio, television, online – they’re all competing. If free dailys manage to break into the Australian market in a big way, I would be interested to see how paid dailys react.

If their reaction was to abolish the cover price I would grab a copy of them all. If everyone did the same that would mess with circulation calculations, and hence their advertising model, but they’ll have to adapt – even more than they already have done. Pretty soon nobody’s going to be prepared to pay. If not quality free daily newspapers people turn to it will be online news, as they already are.

Whatever happens, traditional newspapers are going to have to change the way they operate in today’s market because where consumers go, advertisers will follow.

Additional links:
Free daily newspapers Asia / Pacific
Free daily newspaper – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Metro International
NY Times – Europe’s Papers Join the Cry of ‘Read All About It, Free’