| abstract
| - Free daily newspapers trace their history back to the 1940s when Walnut Creek, California publisher Dean Lesher began what is widely believed to be the first free daily, now known as the Contra Costa Times. In the 1960s, he converted that newspaper and three others in the same county to paid circulation. In the early 1970s, in Boulder, Colorado, regents at the University of Colorado kicked the student-run Colorado Daily off campus because of editorials against the Vietnam War. Regents hoped the paper would die; instead it began to focus on the community as a free tabloid published five days a week. In the next couple of decades, a number of free dailies opened in Colorado. Not coincidentally, most were started by University of Colorado graduates. Free dailies opened in Aspen (1979, 1988), Vail (1984), Breckenridge (1990), Glenwood Springs (1990); Grand Junction (1995); Steamboat Springs (1990) and Telluride (1991). In 1984 the Birmingham Daily News was launched in Birmingham, England. It was distributed free of charge on weekdays to 300,000 households in the West Midlands and was the first such publication in Europe. It was profitable until the early 1990s recession, when it was converted into a weekly title by its then owners Reed Elsevier. In 1995, the founders of free dailies in Aspen and Vail teamed up to start the Palo Alto Daily News in Palo Alto, California, a city about 20 miles south of San Francisco. The Palo Alto paper was profitable within nine months of its launch, and usually carries more than 100 different retail (non classified) ads per day. The "Palo Alto Daily News Model" has been copied a number of times over the years, including by four San Francisco Bay Area publications -- the San Francisco Examiner, the San Mateo Daily Journal, the Berkeley Daily Planet (which opened in 1999 and folded in 2001 and was reopened as a twice-a-week paper by new owners in 2004) and the Contra Costa Examiner (which opened and closed in 2004). The publishers of the Palo Alto Daily News (Aspen Times Daily founding editor Dave Price, and Vail Daily founder Jim Pavelich) have since launched successful free dailies in San Mateo, California (2000), Redwood City, California (2000), Burlingame, California (2000), Los Gatos, California (2002), Denver, Colorado (2002), and Berkeley, California (2006). Each goes by the "Daily News" name with the city's name in front, such as Denver Daily News. Under the Palo Alto Daily News Model, papers are delivered to public places such as coffee shops, restaurants, stores, gyms, schools, corporate campuses and news racks. Price and Pavelich have avoided putting the content of their newspapers online because that would reduce readership of their printed newspapers, and therefore reduce the effectiveness of their print advertising. While ads can be placed on Web pages, they are not as effective for clients as print advertising. They have said that if they ever find an example of a newspaper that is making a profit on its Web site, they would copy that approach. In 1995, the same year the Palo Alto Daily News began Metro, started what may be the first free daily newspaper distributed through public transport in Stockholm, Sweden. Later, Metro launched free papers in the Czech Republic (1996); Hungary (1998); the Netherlands and Finland (1999); Chile, USA, Italy, Canada, Poland, Greece, Argentina, Switzerland and the UK (2000); Spain and Denmark (2001); France, Hong Kong and Korea (2002); and Portugal (2004). According to the Metro web site (see external links), 42 daily Metro editions are published in 63 major cities in 17 countries in 16 languages. However, not every Metro launch was a success, operations in Switzerland, Argentina and the UK were ended after some time while an afternoon free paper in Stockholm was closed within a few months. Metro International is now based in Luxemburg while the company's headquarters are in London. All Metro editions can be downloaded (in PDF format) from their local website or from a special Metro download page (see external links).
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