London Evening Standard Goes Free
UK Newspaper Drops 50p Pricing and Gets Set to Double Distribution
Oct 3, 2009
Alexander Lebedev, the owner of the London Evening Standard, has confirmed plans to drop the 50p price tag on his newspapers and instead offer them in the capital for free. The Evening Standard has been a paid-for title in the city for more than 180 years, and by turning it into a free sheet, Lebedev hopes to challenge the circulation of the London Lite, currently the only free paper in London since the London Paper title closed in September.
Initial Redundancies Ruled Out
It is thought that once the London Evening Standard becomes available as a free paper, the London Lite will be forced to close, making the Standard London’s largest circulating newspaper. Despite ruling out initial redundancies, industry sources maintain that losing the paid-for revenue will encourage hard times for the paper, and speculation has begun on what cuts will be made in order to make ends meet. Speaking to the Guardian, one source said: “You have got to find ways to take costs out of the business when the model moves to free, of course.”
The paper is hoping to make up lost revenue by increasing its circulation and relying more on classified and display advertisements. In theory, this in turn will create more readers and attract more advertisers to the title. Free papers never have an easy run however; the only highly successful free sheet in the UK at the moment is the Metro, an urban news digest, which relies entirely on advertising to keep afloat.
The Impact of Free Newspapers
Free newspapers fill a gap in the news consumption market that other papers have been striving to reach for years; using the Metro as an example once more, it’s target audience is the urban commuter who rarely or never reads national newspapers. This means that the content is usually easy to read, and highly accessible, and often includes celebrity or “soft” news stories.
Reaching these previously lost readers makes free newspapers extremely attractive to advertisers, which means that national titles often lose out in the battle for more revenue to keep their publications afloat. Many journalists feel that free newspapers are contributing heavily to the vastly dropping number of people who regularly purchase newspapers, and believe that this loss of essential regular readers will eventually force nationals to cut spending and even close.
Spending cuts in newspapers is a highly volatile subject amongst industry professionals. They believe that there is already an epidemic across the whole board of newspaper titles; broadsheets, tabloids and free sheets included, where a lack of money is strangling the growth of real investigative journalism. Press releases are becoming news stories, and without the money, staff or time to check up on the information they provide, there is often a danger that invalid or biased news is making its way into the papers that people trust to give them objective news.
Competition and Revenue Implications
With higher competition for readers from free newspapers, paid-for papers are resorting to more opinion and celebrity news in order to gain more sales. Opinion has always been a healthy part of newspaper journalism, but because it is often cheap and requires little research, critics feel that it is being used more and more to fill pages to dampen the need for real investigatory pieces. Without real breaking news stories being uncovered by talented journalists, they believe that the future of print journalism is unsteady, and this has everything to do with the amount of revenue they can pick up.
The so-called death of print journalism has not yet been heralded, but many believe it is only a matter of time before the internet, multimedia and free sheets make newspapers an unviable waste of money to produce. Having the London Evening Standard bow to the current economic climate in such a significant way may signal the beginning of the end for some; only the future can tell what real repercussions there may be from Alexander Lebedov’s actions, but one thing is certain – journalism is changing, and without the revenue it needs to continue providing decent and objective news to the masses, more and more titles may have to resort to the same drastic measures.
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