Now That Hoy's Free, Is RedEye Next?

By: Mark Fitzgerald Here's the question for newspaper industry fashionistas: Is free the new tabloid, or is tabloid the new free?

Perhaps, in the words of the old Certs commercial, the answer is: "Stop -- you're both right." Certainly the tabloid format and the free-distribution models are the two clearest and most hopeful trends in a newspaper business that appears otherwise clueless about how to stop the long slump in circulation and readership or how to accelerate a revenue-side motor that's hitting on only three, or maybe just two, of its four cylinders.

In Europe, many quality broadsheets that were steadily losing readers have seen their paid circulation numbers jump back up after converting to the "compact" format, as they like to style it. In the United States, paid newspapers aren't converting to tabloids, but the tab is the almost inevitable choice for their new spin-off products, whether they are faux alternatives, commuter dailies, or Spanish-language papers.

Increasingly, too, the choice to go tabloid entails going to a free-distribution model as well.

These musings are prompted by Tribune Co.'s announcement Wednesday that the Chicago and Los Angeles editions of its Spanish-language daily tabloid, Hoy, would next month be converted from paid to "controlled circulation," that is, free.

That wasn't the plan when Tribune first decided to make its New York Hoy the template for a national Spanish-language daily. Hoy was a paid paper, albeit one that, at a quarter, sold for half the price of its biggest rival in New York City, El Diario La Prensa. When Hoy was rolled out in Chicago in September 2003 and, last March, in Los Angeles, it retained its cover price.

Now, Hoy is still reeling from the fallout from the massive circulation fraud carried out over the last three years at its New York edition. Publisher Digby Solomon Diez said the paper determined that the only way to grow quickly in the other two markets was to abandon the paid model and target readers with the more cost-efficient strategy of free delivery to targeted ZIP codes.

Hoy's move in turn prompts another question: Will the much-ballyhooed youth daily tabloid in Chicago, RedEye, be the next Tribune paper to convert from paid to free?

Chicago Tribune spokesperson Patti Wetli says there's no plan to change right now, "although we do evaluate this on a regular basis."

Of course, for most RedEye readers, the tabloid has been free from the day it was launched two years ago. I live in about the un-hippest neighborhood in Chicago, and when I want to read RedEye, I've got to drive the family mini-van to the White Hen Pantry and pay a quarter for it. But my cooler and younger friends in neighborhoods where you can't find a parking space never have to pay for their copies. It's there for the taking at all their hangouts, or it just shows up in their apartment building doorway.

Wetli says about 80,000 copies of RedEye are distributed every weekday. Of those, she says, about 14,000 to 15,000 are paid for. "That is steadily increasing," she adds.

Tribune may stick with the paid model indefinitely, but I think a switch to free is inevitable -- and that it will come sooner rather than later.

It isn't just that there's a broad consumer expectation that any new tabloid product will be free, or the more local experience of young Chicagoans that they don't have to pay for RedEye. There's also the changing dynamics inside Tribune Co.

CEO Dennis FitzSimons, who announced the Hoy conversion at Tribune's presentation during media week in New York, came up the broadcast side. Hoy Publisher Solomon is another broadcast guy, and he also led Tribune New Media projects. The new publisher of the flagship Chicago Tribune, David Hiller, spent the last four years as head of Tribune Interactive.

What they have in common is experience reaching an audience with media that are, to consumers, free. The idea of paid circulation is not exactly a foreign concept to them, but neither is it the dogma it has been for generations of newspaper-side executives.

One day, and perhaps soon, I'll be able to get a RedEye for free, too. I'll probably have to drive the mini-van a lot further, though, because you can bet that my neighborhood White Hen will be well outside the controlled-circulation target area.