Thursday, August 20, 2009...5:37 pm
So farewell then, The London Paper…
Quite a few journalism bloggers have noted the news that London free evening paper The London Paper is to close.
It’s not the one I would have picked. I always found it had significantly higher distribution – at about three-to-one against rival London Lite, so I figured it would crowd out its rival. But then I guess that would obviously have raised the costs significantly for owner News International at the same time.
A while ago I did note in passing that I thought there’d be some attrition in the freebie press, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise – though to be honest I’d got so used to seeing it on the train that I thought of it as a bit of a fixture.
Also of some interest is the fact that, of the two free evenings, The London Paper is noticeably less trashy. London Lite is just that – not much more than celebrity photos and some gossip. The London Paper at least had pretensions to being a real newspaper. And I did find its microblogging coverage of the London Mayoral elections last year surprisingly useful.
Which all goes to show that readers don’t seem to be that interested in printed newspapers either – even when they’re free. Not sure how that’ll play for online news.
[HT Jon Slattery et al]
Related posts:
- London Lite closes: free run for the Evening Standard?
- Is free the right price for the Evening Standard?
- Will the all-new Evening Standard halt its decline?
- FT: pink paper turns red?
- Problems with Twitter feed
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