They give away the fat Sunday edition at the park where I jog. And yeah, I shelved it, read a few pages a week later, then tossed it. I agree, low impact, and paper is low status. Cool people are on the internet.
I agree, but one factor here might be that they are generally really bad—boring, poorly-written local news amid scads of badly-designed adverts. You might easily be able to get somewhat higher numbers by having consistently interesting content.
I’m not familiar with the Chicago Reader (I’m British), and I had no idea there was a paper version of the Onion! Do they have decent readerships? If so that supports the notion that good free papers can get people to read them.
Have you ever lived in a place with free newspapers? Nowhere near 10% read them.
They give away the fat Sunday edition at the park where I jog. And yeah, I shelved it, read a few pages a week later, then tossed it. I agree, low impact, and paper is low status. Cool people are on the internet.
I agree, but one factor here might be that they are generally really bad—boring, poorly-written local news amid scads of badly-designed adverts. You might easily be able to get somewhat higher numbers by having consistently interesting content.
Maybe the typical free paper is bad, but the best papers, such as the Chicago Reader and the Onion, are free.
I’m not familiar with the Chicago Reader (I’m British), and I had no idea there was a paper version of the Onion! Do they have decent readerships? If so that supports the notion that good free papers can get people to read them.
The Onion has been scaling back, though things can’t be that bad in print if they were trying to expand to Toronto just last year.