The value of free news
by Peter Preston Posted Wed, Jan 1 2003
Once upon a not-too-distant time, a friend of mine went to work for one of our great global institutions. He was a publisher. They wanted more people around the world to read the research studies and reports they commissioned. “Right!” said my friend. “Start charging. Put a price on everything. Give nothing away free.” They thought he was mad, but of course he wasn’t. Demand increased; institutional reverence increased. It’s the most basic lesson in the book of life. That for which you pay good money has value.
But how does this lesson apply to the media? It is a vexed, crucial question.
For more than two decades, we’ve all known about free sheets, free newspapers whose dependence on advertising leaves little room for editorial content. They are an established fact of regional newspaper life — sometimes (as with much of the alternative press in the United States) giving paid-for chain newspapers a real run for their money; sometimes (as in Europe) creating an underlay of monopoly, so that the paid-for local paper and free sheets operate in tandem, keeping intruders out of the market. Good thing, bad thing? America’s alternatives can often be very good indeed. Europe’s free weeklies keep advertisers happy and newspapers of some kind dropping through doors that might otherwise shun them entirely. There’s no point getting sniffy about the “frees,” but there is a point, I think, in starting to make some connections.
A decade or so ago, some very bright Swedes started the Metro newspaper in Stockholm. It was a terse, tightly-edited morning tabloid of news rather than views. You picked it up outside the underground railway station. It was free, and it filled the ride into town. Young people, especially, seemed to like it — the same young people who didn’t like wading through heavier newspapers that cost them money. These Swedes were clearly onto something.
Now, either directly or indirectly, you can see their idea at work right across Europe. In city after city, from Barcelona to Budapest, the metro wheeze is out there on the station rack every working morning. In Britain, the big Daily Mail group moved fast and got in there first. Its metro series guards the Mail’s own Evening Standard — but does advertising and circulation battle in regional cities like Manchester and Birmingham with paid-for evening contenders from other groups. And the war is by no means over. This year, the Mail’s ancient rival, The Express, has set its own free tabloid. They call it, cheekily enough, the London Evening Mail.
These metros, make no mistake, can turn a profit. The ounding Swedes have grown rich. The Daily Mail has got its series into the black in three years flat. There is good business reason to take notice of this new breed. There’s also an imperative to take notice of their terse, straightforward style. Perhaps — it’s said — this is the key to winning a fresh generation of young readers from the clutches of TV and the Internet.
Indeed. You can’t argue with the Metro’s success. But … there is always a but. Yes, young people who didn’t read any sort of newspaper before now pick up a Metro and scan it between stops. But, no, they don’t seem to get a more voracious print appetite that way. The London Evening Standard’s circulation is falling, like that of almost every evening newspaper everywhere. The transition, if it exists, hasn’t happened yet. And meanwhile an awful apprehension is dawning.
Remember all those Internet hopes? That newspapers and broadcasters could start their own news Web sites and, once established, begin to charge for access to them? Whatever happened? A few sites, to be sure, can put a price on their sites. If you’ve something special to offer, you may find an audience. But general news sites offer no such prospects. Some British papers have virtually scrapped them. Others treat them as promotional tools or investments in a very long-term future.
Perhaps the young generation we all obsess about has picked up a quite contrary message from our various efforts. Perhaps they don’t think that news — on radio, television, the Internet or in print — is something you pay for. Perhaps they think that it always comes free from somewhere, with no value added. Perhaps the sales gambits we habitually use to boost circulation — the cut-price offers, the giveaways — merely reinforce that dire impression. Perhaps we’re selling ourselves dreadfully short.
But how do you get off a drug like this, once you’re hooked — once your sales figures and self-esteem depend on the freebies? How do you stop more entrepreneurs inventing more free sheets? How do you begin to set a proper price, which means a proper value, on the news you gather and the freedoms you bring? These are not easy questions. They challenge journalism itself, and will never be solved by random initiatives or quixotic gestures.
Nevertheless, I don’t think they can be ignored any longer. The evidence of decline is too compelling. The evidence that we’re cutting our own throats — for free — mounts month by month. And there is one abiding lesson we should never forget: Things only have value when you pay for them. And news is not a pearl beyond price.
Peter Preston
Global Journalist columnist Peter Preston is editorial director of the Guardian Media Group and was the chairman of IPI from 1995 to 1997.