In Going Free, London Evening Standard Doubles Circulation While Slashing Costs
20th November 2009
In October, we wrote about how, just as Rupert Murdoch and crew look to put up paywalls for online content, the operators of the London Evening Standard were going in the other direction and making their physical paper free. So, how’s that been working out? mowgs alerts us to the news that the paper has doubled its circulation in just a month. Not bad. But what’s more interesting is that it’s also slashed its distribution costs massively. It used to cost about 30p, and now it’s just 4p per paper.
Those media outlets who figure out the new business model will be with us yet, those that don’t are in the dumpster. It’s just that simple.
The most amusing aspect is that those media outlets that cling most tightly to espousing socialism in their editorial positions — and, increasingly, in their news sections — are the ones most desperately trying to find ways to charge their readers for stuff that their readers are just not willing to pay for. Perhaps in historical terms it will be a sad thing to see the New York Times and the Washington Post go the way of the New York Herald and the Washington Star, but I for one won’t be crying.