News Corp. has taken on charity status with its request (offer) for retail newsagents in South Australia to give away the Messenger newspaper for free.
This does not make sense to me at all.
If you think this will attract traffic it will not, in my opinion.
News is asking newsagents to provide a service. This massive company ought to have the decency to offer fair compensation.
I would be shocked if any newsagent says yes.
Hi mark
this is being done in newcastle with the newscastle star i had a delivery guy just turn up with a stand and when i rang to ask about comission i was told it would increase traffic i then told them to come and pick up heir stand
We have a weekly local paper that is free in out of area village general stores, for customers who aren’t in a delivery area.
This paper used to also be free in newsagencies, but because some newsagents were charging for the paper they changed it that it was only free if home delivered or picked up from an out of area store, but from a newsagency the customer must pay for it.
If they start making it free in all newsagents they are probably looking at cancelling their (paid) distribution and saving money.
I’d say NO thanks.
We don’t need more joy riders, we need revenue enhancers.
how about telling the news corp CEO that newsagents are alowwed to use their holiday homes for free too
We had a local paper that was delivered to homes every fortnight, but they stopped doing that 3 years ago for whatever reason.
As it was a pretty popular local paper, we had a lot of people come through our door asking why they have stopped delivering and do we have the papers? The only place we knew that they were available for distribution was at the local shopping centre.
So we contacted the distributors of the paper and after an initial ‘no’ from them about stocking the papers, they came around and for the last two years we’ve had about 50 copies come in each fortnight.
I know for a fact that these papers have lead to new traffic coming in and allowed us to build rapport with these customers to the point they’ve become regulars and spend their money on other things in store.
This is just an individual insight and I’m sure a lot of news agents are different, but we sought this service, so that our local residents were aware that we do listen and that we do our best to do right by them.
P.S: By we I mean the news agency store owners I work for (I was just involved in the process).
Dan,
Whilst I admire your desire to do right by your customers. I cannot rationalise this as good business.
I was a commuter into London for many years. I witnessed the introduction of the free Metro, picked up from stands. Its effect was dramatic, the paid for Standard converted to free status not so long after and a fabric of London life was lost with Standard sellers all now gone.
I also witness the indecisiveness of newspaper buyers in my shop. Some don’t just buy the regular paper, they pick up several before making a choice. Give them a free one, which will they take to read while having a coffee next door ?
The coffee shop next door buys my papers (as does another) for their customers … will they if there is a freebie outside their door ?
Of course customers lament the absence of something they had for free. But if the freebie in my area cannot generate enough ad revenue to get distributed, I for one will not be offering them a free distribution service (subsidy)
Think about those 50 papers. Some takers buy other things. But maybe these are more than offset by takers who now don’t buy !
Absolutely NO !!
Can’t understand why anybody would agree to this. I understand Dan’s intentions, but by allowing a newspaper company to do something like this only gives them a precedent to do this with other products.