D.C. is next stop on commuter newspaper free-for-all

The way The Washington Post Co. sees it, buses and subway cars are packed with opportunity. The Post's research shows that half the region's mass-transit passengers ride without a newspaper in their hands. What's more, many of those idle riders are in the 18- to 34-year-old age bracket, which is coveted by any newspaper — but especially by one whose circulation has fallen just over 1 percent in the past year.

Commuters should have no trouble seeing the bright yellow boxes at Metro stations, but the question remains whether they will want to read the free Express. (Photo by Chad Capellman)

Express launched Aug. 4. The product of a new Post subsidiary, Express Publications Co., the 20- to 24-page tabloid is produced by the non-union washingtonpost.com, based in Arlington, Virginia. Its press run will be 125,000.

Washington is the latest in a series of North American cities to get giveaway papers aimed primarily at young non-readers. In Philadelphia, Boston and Toronto, commuters can grab free copies of Metro, a tab published by European publisher Metro International SA that offers a mix of wire news, short local coverage, weather and comics in a colorful package. And the Cincinnati Enquirer and Louisville Courier-Journal may introduce similar products later in the year.

No one is likely to confuse Express with its parent's flagship publication. Unlike the content-heavy Post, Express is supposed to be a quick read — 15 to 20 minutes from front to back. It features short summaries from the wires, local news from the Web staff, and plenty of entertainment information. And while the Post's content will be teased from Express, Post reporters won't find their stories in the giveaway.

"We believe Express will be a highly complementary publication alongside the Post and washingtonpost.com, " said Post Vice President Christopher Ma, the new paper's publisher. "It will be of value to morning commuters, and it'll pull in people who would otherwise read infrequently. "

Metro International is the granddaddy of the free commuter newspaper trend. It is the world's leading purveyor of free "subway " newspapers, publishing 25 of them in 16 countries, a fact that's giving established dailies the shivers — especially in Europe, where a far greater portion of newspaper revenue comes from circulation, making a free competitor a distinct threat. Metro reportedly has its eye on a Washington edition, making the Post's move seem like a preemptive strike. In fact, Express's editor, Daniel Caccavaro, previously edited the Boston Metro.

Metro's concept is to develop low-cost publications in cities with high-ridership transit systems, in effect using subways and buses as the distribution structure. The idea has promise. Philadelphia Metro, for instance, prints 152,000 copies each day. And in Boston, where the press run is 170,000, Metro has struck a deal with BostonWorks, the recruitment services division of The Boston Globe, to act as Metro's exclusive recruitment-ad sales agent. In all, Metro's papers printed 2.77 million advertising pages in the second quarter, up from 2.47 million a year earlier, and the company reported a profit of $1.2 million.

Metro may have found a niche, but why would established publishers want to create products that contribute no circulation revenue? The simple answer: Because they believe they have to. Most have found scant success in attracting younger readers, and circulation is continuing to trend lower — even at successful papers like the Post, whose market penetration is the highest in the industry. In the past decade, the Post's circulation dropped about 10 percent — to 757,000 daily and 1,050,000 on Sunday — even as the region's population grew by 700,000, to nearly 5 million.

"The Post faces the same problem that every newspaper in this country faces — an ever-larger generation of people who don't have the newspaper reading habit, " said newspaper analyst John Morton. Although many have tried to reverse the trend through educational and marketing efforts, "It's a problem that's not been solved anywhere, and it's the fundamental reason for declining national daily circulation. So some newspapers have hit on the strategy of trying to inculcate the newspaper reading habit. The Express is one example. "

The youth pitch can be seen too in Chicago, where both major dailies launched weekday tabs last year filled with entertainment, gossip and local news culled from their parent papers. Though the Tribune's RedEye and the Sun-Times' Red Streak were given away free for several months after their launches, each carries a nominal price of 25 cents.

The Chicago papers address the same issue of younger readership, but not all agree that their approach — short stories, lots of show biz news, and even scantily clad women — is on target. Some, like Slate media critic Jack Shafer, see it as "dumbed-down " journalism that fails to recognize the intelligence of young readers. Criticism aside, there are signs that the Chicago efforts are succeeding, at least financially.

Speaking to analysts in June, Tribune Publishing President Jack Fuller said RedEye "is delivering the young, urban consumer with money to spend. "

"A recent Gallup poll indicates that RedEye is on target, " Fuller said. With an average reader age of 30 and average reader income of $63,000, "This demo is younger and more affluent than the readers of the Sun-Times or Chicago Reader [a local alt-weekly]. It's also building a reputation with new advertisers. To date, RedEye has attracted over 170 new local accounts including restaurants and entertainment venues that have never before run an ad in the Chicago Tribune. "

Morton noted that these new papers have the advantage of lower ad rates, a big draw for smaller accounts that would never be able to pay the ROP rate of a big daily. "The typical advertisers would be those who have been priced out of the Washington Post, " he said, adding that Express's success "will depend a lot on the ad rate that's established. " (Express advertising will be offered as part of a package that includes the Post and the Web site.)

Those lower rates are possible because the metros aren't expending a great deal of money to publish the new papers. Typesetting equipment, presses, trucks and in most cases staff are already in place. "There's not a whole lot more to pay for, " said Morton. Indeed, Fuller told the analysts that RedEye was born "with modest incremental costs because we used the Tribune's existing content, production and promotion resources. " So in a financial sense, giveaways represent low-hanging fruit for hungry publishers.

But with most major markets increasingly saturated with free publications, from weeklies to employment guides to real estate tabs, one key requirement for success may be getting there first. When Metro announced its intention to launch its giveaway in Toronto in 2000, both the Toronto Sun and the Toronto Star rushed to unveil their own. But Metro turned on the speed, and in just three days unveiled the product. All three hit the subway and bus stops the same day. (The Star merged its free paper, Today, with Metro in 2001, creating a giveaway with circulation of 182,000.)

In a move to counter The Post, the Washington-area Journal papers have begun distributing free versions of its paper at Metro stations. (Photo by Chad Capellman)

For the Journal, it may well be a grudge match. Its publisher, Ryan Phillips, is irked that the Post chose the name Express, which was the name of a chain of weeklies the Journal acquired in 1992 but which stopped publishing five years later. Phillips has said he's weighing legal action; the Post counters that the use of the name was approved by its trademark lawyers.

Express, like RedEye and Red Streak, will serve to extend the brand of its parent. Ma, the Express publisher, said there will be frequent references on its pages to stories in the Post, "and we're certainly going to use Express as a vehicle for cross-promoting content. "

Express's online presence will be found at washingtonpost.com, which Ma said will have clear navigation links to the content. "We're deliberately not developing a separate Web site, " he said. The idea is to drive readers to the Post site, he said.

Express may well produce a profit eventually, as the Post hopes. But can it be expected to plant the seed of newspaper readership among younger residents? Some observers maintain that there is a younger audience that still reads newspapers, but that it's doing so on the Internet — a giveaway of a different sort.

That's certainly true to some extent. But Vin Crosbie, president and managing partner of Digital Deliverance, an electronic publishing consultant, said even online editions are not doing terribly well with readers. He noted that the New York Times' 8.6 million viewers in May averaged only 5.94 visits per person — far from regular readership.

Crosbie said many younger Americans aren't getting information either online or in print because newspapers are simply too generic to have broad appeal. "They're not reading (the newspaper) because it doesn't contain stuff they want to read, " Crosbie said. "If you give it away free at the Metro and at bus stops, at the times when people are most looking to distract themselves, chances are they'll pick it up and read it. But that doesn't mean they'll start reading the Post or the Tribune. I don't think this is going to help at all. "

Ma said he believes "there will be positive rub-off " on the Post as Express develops. But he stressed that the paper's sole purpose isn't just to grow readers. "We expect that Express, as a quick read during the morning commute, will work on its own terms, " he said. "This is not primarily about developing future newspaper readers for the Post. We believe there's a viable advertising proposition in reaching well-educated professional people through a print product. "