washingtonpost.com: Post Co. To Launch Free Tabloid

Correction to This Article
A July 11 Business article on plans by The Washington Post Co. to launch a new tabloid mischaracterized The Post's subscriber base in the metropolitan area. About 53 percent of adults in the region read The Post during the week and 67 percent on Sundays.

The Washington Post Co. plans to launch a free tabloid newspaper in early August to be handed out weekdays during morning rush hour at Metro stations, as part of an effort to attract younger readers and stave off potential competition.

The one-section commuter paper, called the Express, will include short, mostly wire-service news and entertainment summaries, and it will be run by a small staff in the washingtonpost.com newsroom in Arlington. The Express will be a wholly owned division of the Post Co., which would not disclose how much the paper will cost to start.

The venture comes as newspapers face an aging, declining readership and have had spotty success at winning 18-to-34-year-old readers, many of whom are used to getting their news from the Internet. Also, in cities such as Boston and Philadelphia, daily papers are facing recent competition from free straphanger tabloids. By launching its own giveaway, The Post Co. hopes to prevent a rival tab from rooting in Washington.

The Express will be 20 to 24 pages, staple-bound and appear Monday through Friday. It is to be given away principally during the morning commute and in news boxes; it will also be passed out on college campuses. Initially, The Post Co. will print 125,000 copies. By comparison, The Washington Post's daily circulation as of April was 757,000, down 1.1 percent from the first quarter of 2002.

The paper is meant to complement, not compete with, The Post, said Christopher Ma, a Post Co. vice president who is the Express's publisher. For instance, because the Express's deadline will be 9 p.m., the paper will not include late sports scores. Nor are there plans to include articles written by Post reporters. But the Express may use content from washingtonpost.com, Ma said.

"It's a way for The Post Company to reach an audience that by virtue of lifestyle and time limitations finds it difficult to read newspapers frequently," Ma said.

Asked if he thought the Express would siphon readers from The Post, Ma said: "The Post is an extraordinarily well-read newspaper in the Washington area, and yet there is a very significant proportion of the metro public-transit commuting population that is not necessarily reading The Post during that morning commute."

In researching the new paper, Post employees rode Metro trains and took note of what people did while riding as well as what they were reading, if anything. About half of the riders did nothing besides ride. Those are potential Express readers, The Post concluded.

In addition to giving readers an at-a-glance view of news and entertainment that's designed to be read in about 15 minutes, the Express will heavily promote The Post, "embedding" references to related articles in that day's Post or other items, such as live discussions, on washingtonpost.com. Because the Express will not publish on weekends, it is meant to drive readers to buy the Saturday and Sunday editions of The Post.

The Express will not give away Post content, Ma said. For instance, the Express's entertainment listings will contain movie openings and promote, but not print, reviews by Post critics.

The Express is the second recent attempt by The Post Co. to grab younger readers. The newspaper's new Sunday Source section, which launched in the spring, contains features on pets, gardening, travel, fashion, food and so forth. It is aimed at Washington area residents who typically do not read newspapers. From an advertising viewpoint, The Post Co. considers the Sunday Source a success.

Because the Express will focus on morning commuters, it will seek advertisers that typically buy time on morning-drive radio and television. Ma said he expects the Express to be profitable within a few years.

"I think it's a great idea for The Post, but it's not a threat to radio because our morning audience is either at home or in car," said Jim Farley, vice president of news and programming at the top-rated WTOP news radio station. "We can't reach people riding the Metro."

Another competitor will be the Washington City Paper, an alternative weekly heavy on entertainment coverage and listings.

"So The Post is going after the hipster demographic -- what a surprise," said City Paper Editor Erik Wemple. "Although you wouldn't know it from the stiff front page, [The Post] is a paper that wants everyone in the entire region reading it."

Advertisers, both local and national, will be able to buy ads in the Express or in a "bundle" with advertising in The Post and on the Web site, Ma said. The Express will print classified and job-recruitment ads. (The Express was also the name of a chain of weekly newspapers in Montgomery County that was bought by the Journal Newspapers in the 1990s.)

The Express is the first new business The Post Co. has started since launching Digital Ink, the predecessor to washingtonpost.com, in 1995.

The giveaway, or "free sheet," newspaper has become a growing phenomena in recent years. An industry leader, and potentially the biggest Post Co. competitor, is Metro International SA, a Luxembourg-based company with 25 papers in 16 countries, including papers in Boston and Philadelphia.

Daniel Caccavaro, who edited the Boston Metro for a year, will edit the Express, which will rely on editors and production staff but have no staff writers.

Metro International has expressed a desire to expand elsewhere in North America and has indicated that Washington D.C., with its high subway ridership -- now second in the country to New York -- would be a likely target.

The company has exhibited a willingness and ability to launch its papers quickly. In 2000, Metro International announced that it would start a paper in Toronto. Before the company could get its giveaway off the ground, however, two Toronto daily papers rushed their own free sheets into circulation. Unbowed, Metro International parachuted in a team, put them up in a hotel suite and launched a Toronto Metro in three days, hitting the streets the same day as the local papers' giveaways.

"It is my own personal belief that nearly all papers will be free in the next 10 years," said James McDonald, publisher of the Philadelphia Metro, which prints about 152,000 copies and estimates that three-quarters of its readers are under 44. "Consumer habits have changed; newspapers haven't. They can get The Washington Post and other papers online for free."

The Express is the newest manifestation of The Post Co.'s continuing strategy to dominate the D.C. metro region, where 53 percent of homes subscribe to The Post during the week and 67 percent on Sundays. Those rates are among the industry's highest.

Ma said The Post Co. considered launching a giveaway paper in 2000, but the advertising climate caused the company to shelve the idea. The continued success of free sheets in the United States and elsewhere persuaded the company to dust off the concept.