'SF Examiner' Joins Free Paper Network

By: Mark Fitzgerald The San Francisco Examiner and the Nashville (Tenn.) City Paper have joined the Free Daily Newspaper Network (FDNN), in the first expansion since the March 31 launch of the group specializing in national advertising sales for free dailies.

FDNN, which started with Journal Newspapers in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., plus Tribune Co.'s commuter paper amNewYork, said it would be announcing new affiliates within the next month.

"The concept of joining forces with other free daily newspapers [to form a unified group buy] has really taken off with advertisers. We are seeing strong interest from newspapers across the country who wish to be a part of our network", said James McDonald, president of FDNN and Journal Newspapers.

He said the Examiner and the Nashville City Paper shared the "common mission" of FDNN affiliates of producing breaking and local news with strong news staffs. "This reduces the amount of wire services (copy) which dominate other free dailies ... (and) sets us apart as strong products in the markets we represent."

"We are excited to be a part of this network as they launch a campaign to educate national advertisers about how to reach young, elusive consumers through free dailies," Scott McKibben, president of the San Francisco Newspaper Group, which publishes the Examiner, said in a statement. "FDNN will help legitimize this new media while simplifying the buying process for national advertisers, allowing local offices to focus their energies on local and regional business."

In a statement, Brian Brown, prsident of the three-year-old City Paper, said: "We're bringing young people into the newspaper habit, and covering the metropolitan areas better than the traditional daily, whose focus has been expansion to the suburbs. The way we see it, people with influence travel out of their homes and through the 'center of commerce' on a daily basis. If they were staying home all day, then they would have the time to read a five-section daily in their homes, but we're not as interested in those readers. We want to reach active, upwardly mobile professional people while they are on the move. In this sense we're complementary to the paid dailies and not rivals."

FDNN, which has offices in New York City and Washington, wants to be the centralized sales network representing free dailies in virtually every major market in which one exists, but plans to affiliate with only one newspaper in a given market, said Susan Peiffer, vice president of sales and marketing for FDNN.