At boston.com is an article by Mark Jurkowitz about the Examiner newspapers being home delivered free to homes in affluent areas in Washington and San Francisco. Here’s a good description by Jurkowitz:
The paper has developed a unique formula. It is a graphically snappy tabloid with a focus on local news and conservative-leaning opinion pages produced by a small staff. It is distributed free to households with incomes of more than $75,000. Examiner executives say the goal is not to knock out their more powerful rivals, The Washington Post, (700,000 daily circulation) and the San Francisco Chronicle (480,000). Rather, the goal is to appeal to readers looking for an easier-reading alternative to the big metro daily and to attract advertisers who can efficiently target dollars to reach high-income consumers.
This is a story US newspaper publishers are watching very closely. Will the Examiner model of bypassing the costs of customer acquisition and careful socio-economic targeting work? Will advertisers support the model long term? Teething problems aside, this story at boston.com and others in recent times suggest that the Examiner model has legs in major cities in the US.
In Australia, 4,600 newsagents play a key role in the home delivery of newspapers. We do so for a share of cover price and a per item delivery fee. An Examiner model here would flip the current home delivery model upside down with immediate economic impact on newsagents.
Being a cog in the supply chain, in any industry, at the moment is challenging.