Last August, Bruno Giussani wrote:
The rapid growth of free newspapers in European (and, for now to a lesser extent, American) cities is one of the most interesting phenomena in recent publishing history.
His post is dense with information about this phenomenon, the newspaper and advertising industries and the subversion of both traditional newspaper economics and editorial mix. He concludes:
… many of the freesheets do not shy away from writing about that scarecrow of many traditional newsrooms: products and commerce. It always amazes me how a gigantic pan of our daily life is fenced out of most traditional newspapers because "it would constitute free advertisement": we buy clothes, use cell phones and cameras and tons of other gadgets, go to restaurants, play videogames, want to be informed if a new grocer opens in the neighborhood or a new Apple store opens in town or a new route is opened by a low-cost airline, but most of this stuff never shows up in the editorial pages of most dailies, or only within specific columns. Books and movies and music pass muster because they're "culture", but cell phones apparently aren't, and "serious" newsrooms want Nokia and Samsung to appear only in the ad pages. Free newspapers don't care about this: they know that most of us spend more time using our cell phones than going to movie theatres, and when a new cool model comes out, they deem it newsworthy. In this sense, free dailies are way more modern and in tune with the times than most traditional newspapers.
That's one take on the freesheet phenomenon. Here's another … On 12 February, 2007, the FT published this letter:
Sir, Surely by now every last Londoner has been approached on the street by a distributor of one of London's "free" daily newspapers. These papers may be free to readers, but they also carry real costs for other social groups in the city.
Free dailies externalise their production costs in at least three ways. They clutter and detract from the appearance of our streetscapes and public spaces (costs to all Londoners); they generate great volumes of rubbish which then become the disposal problem of boroughs (costs to borough residents); and they create extra cleaning costs for Transport for London when papers are left behind on trains and in stations (costs to TfL and therefore transport users).
Given that 400,000 copies of each paper circulate daily (19m pages), these costs are not insignificant. We might be wise to ask whether free London dailies are really free - and if they are not, then who pays?
David Grover,
Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics, London
The letter was reprinted by Roy Greenslade who, today, highlighted Justin Canning's Project Freesheet. Firstly, here's Project Freesheet ('We want to see an increase in the number of freesheets being recycled and we want to see the freesheet publishers paying for the waste they are creating'), drawing on and quoting from an article published in The Ecologist by Jon Hughes (linked to below):
In 45 different countries around the world there are 35.8 million freesheet newspapers being printed every day. The environmental impact of a product that has a designed life span of 20 minutes is being seriously overlooked. (what's it all about?) …
The more sinister side of the freesheet phenomenon is its ultimate impact on paid for newspapers. The current crop of freesheets are aimed at those who are too busy to read a newspaper or have no inclination to buy one. Rather than address the reason why the paying public is shunning their products, newspaper publishers are seeking to create revenue by numbers alone. Advertisers will be seduced with the argument that while only half a million editions of say, Metro, are published, readership will be well over a million because it is dumped on the public transport system.
Freesheets such as Metro et al operate on very tight margins. As they become more nationally embedded, whole elements of them will become syndicated, beginning with TV pages and pop gossip through to national and international news. They might tell you the what, but not the why or the how. Investigations and campaigns will become rarer than they are now. Coverage of politics above the tittle-tattle of personality, less and less.
To supply the newsprint on which all this trash is printed, whole swathes of Europe are being turned over to plantation forests, which is wiping out bio-diversity. (the knock on effect)
Roy Greenslade (today):
Canning's major concern is about the environmental impact. He cites an article in The Ecologist magazine that deals with London's 1.5m daily freesheets. That equates to the felling of 400 trees every day after use of recycled pulp. Then, using those figures as a guide, he contends that 8,000 trees are being felled every day "for a product that has the attention span of about 10 minutes. That doesn't seem very good use of valuable resources."
He continues: "On top of that, the product is not being recycled... [because] papers do not have any retention value. The second reason is the sheer volume that are being circulated. Most end up as street litter and go straight to landfill. Westminster council has said that it will need to spend an extra £500,000 over the next two years just to keep up with the quantities involved."
Canning writes: "We are living in an age when corporate responsibility is supposed to be being addressed. Is it possible to carry on letting the newspaper publishers of the world churn out a product that serves no real purpose other than to provide opportunity for advertising? Basic economics is one thing. Stupidity and irresponsibility is quite another."
The Ecologist article dates from last November and claimed then that the London freesheet facts were:
… 1.5 million … are being given away in and around the capital’s Tube stations each day. The breakdown is as follows: Associated Newspapers’ Metro 540,000; London Lite (also published by Associated Newspapers) and News International’s thelondonpaper around 400,000 respectively, and City AM 65,000. Soon to be added to this is a free afternoon paper to be distributed, like Metro, on the underground system, rather than outside Tube stations like the other three. And on the last Friday of September, two free sports newspapers were unleashed on an unsuspecting public. This is a problem that is growing like Topsy, which has an unchecked motion all of its own.
