There’s no such thing as free

Free daily newspapers are in sharp decline across Europe – can the UK buck the trend? By Raymond Snoddy.

As everyone knows there really isn’t such a thing as free – and that’s before you start making jokes about lunch.

For more than a decade free daily newspapers in Europe seemed to defy the obvious nostrum. Starting from around 1995 the rise of the daily frees seemed remorseless for the next 12 years. There was talk that free might even be the most dynamic part of the print market, and maybe, just maybe over the longer term, that the frees might be the ultimate destination of print.

Advertisers were prepared to fund them. People who were not much interested in actually buying newspapers were prepared to pick up a free title for the daily commute to work. And most wondrous of all you could reach the youth market, a sector least interested of all in buying a newspaper.

It seemed close to the perfect formula although naturally competition ate into profit as everyone tried to jump on the bandwagon.

We now know that 2007 was the summit and from 2008 the graph, in terms of numbers of titles and circulation, was the equivalent of a black ski run heading downwards.

We are indebted to one of the world’s greatest experts on the free newspaper movement Piet Bakker, a Dutch journalism professor, for the European trends and the figures that lie behind them. At their peak in 2007, according to Bakker, there were 140 free daily newspapers in 31 European countries with a total circulation of 27 million.

By the end of 2013 the numbers had dropped to 65 free dailies in 23 countries with a total circulation of just 14 million, a decline of 50 per cent.

Bakker will this month finalise his figures for Europe last year and further average declines are likely.

The picture is obviously not uniform. The frees are still doing well in Austria, for example, and the UK could be another bright spot when all the numbers are published.

Bakker is planning no less than 67 blogs – one per country- starting with Europe, in alphabetical order. When he finishes his project it will be the most comprehensive survey of the sector anywhere.

The reasons for the sharp decline appear to be obvious. When recession hits, advertising melts like the snows of spring, and the frees seem to be in the front line of vulnerability. This has hit the Southern European countries of the Eurozone particularly hard.

The Netherlands, France and Spain have been struggling and Italy and Portugal are not in a strong position, according to Bakker. The ramifications of current events in Greece will hardly help.

Economic cycles come and go and if it were simply waiting for another upswing, eventually daily frees could perhaps begin to flourish again.

The Dutch professor is, however, worried that something more fundamental may be happening – that the young are now less inclined to pick up a newspaper even if it is free. The time once spent reading frees is now being spent on their mobiles.

Does any of this mean much for the UK market? Probably not too much in the short term. The UK economy is performing better than the European average and both the Evening Standard in London and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Metro, are remarkable publishing achievements.

The Standard may not be quite what it once was but then that Standard would long since have died under the weight of losses running at the time of between £20-£30 million a year. It was a master stroke by the Independent group to buy the paper for £1 and take it free.

The Standard, now modestly in profit, has the great advantage of serving a concentrated commuting audience in one of the most vibrant and expanding cities in the world. Numbers are being boosted by sending more copies to the suburbs, though perhaps more thought could go into this process. It’s great that copies are available in local Waitrose stores but are readers expected to go to their supermarkets daily to get a copy?

The Metro, which was of course set up after the Daily Mail’s Lord Rothermere visited Stockholm to see the original Metro launched there, has perhaps more to worry about.

It was always a delight to see young people on their way to school walk along tube carriages to pick up their copies. The young are more and more closely attached to their mobiles and a commitment to Facebook, YouTube and the others could put a squeeze on the space for print. Will mobile editions manage to hold their attention?

Specialist publications such as City A.M. should be much more resilient than general titles but in the face of international trends no one can afford to be complaisant.

As for local free newspapers in the UK, there has been no Bakker figure to plot their fate although there has been a steady drip of closures which historically was always the case in recessions.

The big question for the local press will be the extent to which people will be prepared to pay for local news.

There are always wonderful exceptions of course such as Sir Ray Tindle who has decided that the way to cope with recession was to expand and launch new papers. Most Tindle publications are small and admirably local.

There was a rather different approach from Trinity Mirror, however, which in November closed seven papers including the Reading Post and a number of titles in Surrey and West London to concentrate efforts online.

And the fate of my own first newspaper, the Middlesex Advertiser – then a broadsheet which turned into a tablet-sized Uxbridge Gazette. Then it went free and was delivered to selected households.

Last year production moved to Watford and deliveries stopped. The paper – it is still a paper for now – can be picked up at 400 retail outlets but the main emphasis now seems to be on the website getwestlondon. It has one young reporter covering the entire Borough of Hillingdon whereas in ancient times the Middlesex Advertiser had up to 15 reporters covering the same area.

It might be worthy of a study by Piet Bakker.