The Gannett paper that arguably started the trend reports on the daily newspaper industry's response to its ongoing readership decline. Newspaper analyst John Morton claims the industry's new quick-read publications "shout 'this is not your father's newspaper.''' AAN's Richard Karpel says they're "just dumbed-down news" and complains, ''(a)t a time when 70% of the public thinks Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, the last thing we need is dumber newspapers."
The launch of the Cincinnati Enquirer's free weekly is the news hook around which the Wall Street Journal wraps its look at the daily newspaper industry's efforts "to hook the MTV generation on newspapers." WSJ reports that in a recent conference call, the Tribune Co.'s CFO said that its RedEye has attracted about 250 new advertising clients that haven't previously advertised in the Chicago Tribune.
Although Velocity is aimed at young adults, it is "not being positioned as a direct competitor" to the 13-year-old AAN-member Louisville Eccentric Observer, claims Ed Manassah, publisher of the local Gannett daily responsible for the new paper. Nevertheless, Manassah sends a shot across LEO's bow when he claims the young-adult "marketplace" is "not being serviced." The new publication's name "is a play off the word `city,' but then there's also the connection to a faster pace and speed," the paper's new editor explains helpfully.
The media conglomerate's corporate Web site is advertising jobs for "soon-to-be launched weekly" newspapers in Indianapolis, where its INtake is set to appear on Dec. 11; Cincinnati; Louisville, Ky.; and Palm Springs, Calif., according to E&P's Lucia Moses. Cincinnati CityBeat Editor and Co- Publisher John Fox tells E&P that he's not overly concerned with the new competition. "We've been around for nine years," he said. "We have numbers, we have relationships. I think we're going to be fine."
Seeking to "hook young people on the newspaper habit, with the hope that they might eventually graduate to more substantive, established fare," the Tribune Company's amNew York debuted in Manhattan on Friday. Free dailies like amNew York face a number of daunting challenges, says Jacques Steinberg, like distribution issues, lack of profitability and cannibalization of existing dailies in the same market. "But perhaps the biggest uncertainty surrounding such publications is how much attention busy young people will pay to newspapers whose short articles ... are in many instances supplied by news agencies like The Associated Press," notes Steinberg.
In a message originally sent to an AAN listserv, Cincinnati CityBeat Editor and Co-Publisher John Fox tells AAN News that a kickoff party for the Cincinnati Enquirer's "faux alt weekly" was held last week. The new paper, which hits the streets Oct. 29, has been christened Cin. Fox speculates about the meaning of "Cin" and says a 64-page, four-color prototype, "Looks a lot like Thrive in Boise, where the Enquirer's new publisher came from -- similar layout and flow, with 10 pages of daily classifieds in the back. Not a single story jumps."
"Commuter papers have been shown to be read by huge numbers of professionals and attract lucrative advertising, while paid dailies face limited growth prospects and have all but lost the ability to charge a premium for home delivery," says a new report from the International Newspaper Marketing Association, according to Editor & Publisher (paraphrasing from the report). E&P also talks to a consultant who says he's "been told of (free commuter dailies) being planned in three cities."
So says Chicago Reader Publisher and COO Jane Levine (pictured), who admits that Tribune Publishing's new youth-oriented daily tabloid has made it more difficult to reach Tribune clients who don't advertise in the Reader. "It's just easier for them and way cheaper" to add RedEye to their Tribune media spend, Levine tells Media Daily News. "These papers are going after, and I don't think very successfully, an age," Levine says. "They want 18 to 34, period, young for young's sake. What the reader of our paper is and always has been is more of psychographic and a lifestyle."
The new tabloid, amNewYork, will target young urban commuters and will be launched early in the fourth quarter, according to Newsday. Distribution will begin in Manhattan and then spread to the other boroughs, with papers given away at subway stations and bus stops as well as health clubs, bars, restaurants and bookstores. Tribune Publishing, which owns the youth-oriented daily Red Eye in Chicago, will partner in New York with newspaper executive Russel Pergament, who developed the original idea for amNewYork.
Steve May, who sold the Times of Acadiana to Thomson in 1996, tells Gambit Weekly it was subsequent acquirer Gannett that brought him out of retirement. May says he started his new paper, The Independent, because Gannett is "on the verge of owning Louisiana. They are two markets away from total ownership concentration." Ted Power, who serves as publisher of both the Times of Acadiana and Gannett's local daily, The Advertiser, admits the weekly has declined in quality since Gannett's acquisition. "The Times has been neglected," he says, promising to revamp the paper, moving it further away from its alternative-weekly roots
