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Less private dick’s and more journalists please

Posted in Media April 27th, 2007 by Jack Royston

The gloves have come off in the battle of the London free sheets but why is Associated Newspapers hiring a private dick to investigate rivals News International when there are story hungry journalists itching for jobs?

Associated, publisher of London Lite, recently acquired video footage of distributors of News International’s Thelondonpaper dumping thousands of issues on three separate occasions.

News International countered by publishing photos of dumped copies of London Lite and pointing out that all free sheets face similar problems.

The real question is why did Associated pump valuable resources into hiring an ex-Scotland Yard private detective with a five strong team to fight dirty rather than solving its own problems by following the lead of London Lite’s sister publication Metro?

Celebrity gossip is all very well and good, it provides light relief after a hard day’s work.

But it must not come at the expense of serious news or both Thelondonpaper and London Lite will find more and more people brushing angrily passed their increasingly desperate distributors.

Anyone who has seen the hunger with which commuters hunt down stray copies of Metro lying around on tube trains will know that there is a strong market for substance.

This point is also demonstrated in the paid for market. Despite a recent drop in its readership The Sun still has the highest distribution with sales of 3,031,724 in March ahead of The Daily Mail whose figures were second biggest at 2,342,915.

Also owned by News International, The Sun has a similar reputation for celebrity gossip as London Lite.

But the difference between the tabloids and the London free sheets is that they also cover serious issues and hammer home an emotional message that, regardless of your politics, obviously appeals to a lot of people.

If the London Lite and Thelondonpaper are trying to take the idea behind The Sun and apply it to the London news market they have missed the point. The key to The Sun’s success is emotion.

Whether its outrage over the kidnap of British sailors or sympathy for the victims of serious crime the red tops know how to provoke a reaction from their readers.

The front page of today’s (Friday, 27 April) copy of Metro is a fine example of what the other free sheets should be doing.

It is a feature on refugees of the Darfur conflict in Sudan and carries all the emotional impact of even the best not for profit direct mailers.

Neither London Lite nor Thelondonpaper have the respect Metro gets and its place in the market is not under threat.

London Lite’s distribution figures were down 0.14 per cent in March and Associated gave away 100,000 fewer copies than Thelondonpaper’s 502,158. Metro beats both papers with figures of 547,180 in London.