New media
The new news thing, from web to print
By Heidi Dawley
Jan 23, 2007, 01:05

In just 18 months, three free daily newspapers have launched in London, and now a fourth is set to debut, called Newsstand. But Newsstand will be entirely unlike the others and in fact quite unlike any other newspaper in London or perhaps anywhere.

After years of content moving from print to the internet, Newsstand intends to reverse the process, putting in print stories from web news sites and blogs that do not have print outlets of their own. The idea is to deliver the best reporting, regardless of origin, and to give exposure to worthy online stories that otherwise would get little exposure.

“It is absolutely logical that it should happen, because people always over-estimate the speed at which habits and platforms change. The result is that there is a lot of very good content on the internet that very few people see," says Richard Addis, the managing director of the new venture and former editor of both the Financial Times Weekend edition and Canada’s Globe and Mail.

Addis is not revealing many details about his venture, but he says that he has raised sufficient capital to get Newsstand off the ground and is now busy preparing for the launch, which is set for April. The paper will have a staff of about 25 and will be distributed weekdays to 30,000 homes in upscale neighborhoods.

Addis plans is to rely on the internet for well over half the content of Newsstand, which will cover a range of news, from current affairs to arts and leisure. The plan is for 80 percent of the  internet content to come from web sites and 20 percent from blogs.

In return for releasing their content to Newsstand, the sites and blogs will gain exposure to a wider audience. Addis has yet to approach sites but believes there will be interest.

The second pillar of Addis's editorial strategy is hyper-local coverage, with one fourth of the paper's news hole set aside for news about those neighborhoods in which Newsstand will be distributed. Some of that will come from the internet as well.

Addis argues that one effect of the rise of the internet is the idea of very vertical content, stories of intense interest smaller number of people. There's a rise in interest in and a demand for news about a person’s own block or street, he says. He points to the success of web sites in the U.S that cover virtually everything that happens in their neighborhoods.

The idea behind Newsstand, he says, is to do that in print. He thinks that in time he can then create a chain of hyper-local newspapers that advertisers can buy space across.

Media folks have yet to see Newsstand, but some see a few potential sticking points, beyond the question of whether the market is already saturated with free papers.

From the point of view of the web site owners providing content for Newsstand, Tony Evans, managing partner of Mindshare in London, sees some advantages.

“It is an interesting way for someone who is online-only to get off-line,” he says.

But Evans wonders whether, once readers have been directed online to the sites, that they would still need the paper. Would they then just go directly to those sites? “I don’t know if there is longevity in this,” he says.

Addis doesn't see that as an issue, arguing that people would rather have someone else compiling stories for them. “I think that people are much too lazy on the whole to go around and look at web sites.” 

Meanwhile, in online ratings for the week ended Jan. 14, the top five parent companies were Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Time Warner and News Corp. The top five brands were also familiar, Google, Yahoo, MSN Live/Windows, Microsoft and AOL.

Experian Group Limited was the top advertiser with 10.99 million impressions generated, more than double No. 2 NexTag at 4.5 million. With 25.4 million ads served, Yahoo was again the top advertising site, more than tripling No. 2 MySpace at 7.2 million.

Sessions per person were up one to 17, with domains visited per person also up one to 40. Average PC time per person per week was up nearly 6 percent to 17 hours and 26 minutes.