I remember the freesheet wars a few years back when Londoners welcomed two new players to the freesheet market. It was a monopoly the Metro newspaper, London’s first freesheet, had enjoyed for far too long. What a media frenzy and what chaos outside the train and tube stations.
On Friday 18th September Londoners said goodbye to one of those new players, a News International title, the Londonpaper. I have to say out of the three it was probably my favourite. The layout, the news snippets, the trashy celeb column and the style sections rocked. But for bosses at News International, things weren’t so great. With distribution just over 500K (against the Metro’s 1.3m) the paper was reportedly losing its publishers £10million a year it was time to shut shop.
The closure of the londonpaper came at the time when News International announced their strategy to start charging for online content that has so far been available for free. From June 2010 titles such as The Times will charge users for their news, features and more.
So what do we think about the end of free content? I for one think if it’s worth it, people will pay. We’ve enjoyed over a decade of free stuff and now we’re drowning in so much free we don’t know the good from the mediocre but at least we expect the great from something we pay for and I believe publishers have understood this. I’d expect News International have thought long and hard about ways to offer high quality, super relevant and valuable content and services to readers once they start charging.
Today the Evening Standard, the capital’s only paid for newspaper, announced it will start charging zero to readers. Previously part of Associated Newspapers Group, sister to another freesheet, London Lite but now under new Russian owners it has decided to take on the freesheet market head on. So as one goes paid for, the other goes free. Interesting huh?
So what next for publishing? Is the future free or a combination of both?
(Rana Khodadoust)
