By: Lucia Moses MBTA Said Metro To Get Equal Treatment
Boston Metro may be small in size, but as this week's
events showed, it's not one to be pushed around.
Four days before the free-distribution paper hit the streets May
3, transit agency officials removed Metro boxes from
subway stations, a key area for Metro distribution. This
week, Publisher Russel Pergament claimed victory after the
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) said it would
let Metro distribute wherever other newspapers are.
"It looks like it's equal treatment for all -- that's all we ever
wanted," Pergament said.
The MBTA said it wasn't rewriting policy, just affirming its
existing rules governing distribution of newspapers in transit
stations. But it admitted that the introduction of a free paper
raised fresh issues for the agency and that in some cases, its
own rules were being violated.
This week, Metro, a quick-read, tab-sized paper targeting
non-newspaper readers, threatened to take legal action unless it
got equitable treatment. It also accused the MBTA of
discrimination, saying transit inspectors harassed its hawkers,
who tend to be black or Hispanic.
"I think their instinct is to please the existing power
structure," Pergament said. "We are not part of that."
The Boston situation isn't the first skirmish for Metro
parent Metro International, which has 19 copycat editions
worldwide. In Philadelphia, where Metro made its U.S. debut, the
established dailies sued over an exclusive distribution agreement
between Metro and the transit system there.
In Boston, authorities were concerned that a widely distributed
free paper would create a litter problem (Metro plans a
distribution of 175,000). But although hawkers aren't supposed to
be inside stations, some have been selling The Boston
Globe and Boston Herald inside turnstiles for years.
And even after kicking Metro boxes out of stations, the
MBTA discovered a handful of Globe and Herald boxes
inside stations.
"They're saying, 'You have hawkers inside selling papers. What
about us?'" an MBTA spokesman said. "These are things we have to
deal with."
It remains to be seen whether Metro hurts the paid
dailies. So far, the Globe and Herald report
Metro hasn't hurt their sales. The Globe added
extra hawkers and halved its price to 25 cents around transit
stations, and said it's selling 50% more papers in those areas.
Lucia Moses (lmoses@editorandpublisher.com) is an associate editor covering business for E&P.
Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.
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