Free newspapers: Better than their reputation?

 In Europe's major cities, cut-throat competition from free newspapers is causing a major waste problem. In Switzerland, too, the mountains of waste caused by free newspapers are beginning to have an impact (see ). The question arises as to what will be left of the growing mountains of waste paper and what impact the free titles could have on the market for paid-for newspapers. Michael Haller, a communications scientist from Leipzig, has examined market developments on the basis of five country studies (Switzerland, the UK, Austria, France and Denmark) and has come to conclusions that at least partially rehabilitate the poor reputation of free newspapers. The success of free newspapers is not automatically to blame for the sales problems of paid-for newspapers. In Germany, where the free newspaper phenomenon has not yet played a major role, the decline in the reach of the regional press has been roughly on the same scale as in Switzerland, for example. Haller concludes that well-made daily newspapers would lose practically no readers to free newspapers. According to Haller, the refusal of young people in particular to read newspapers has more to do with a crisis in the cultural technique of newspaper reading. Free newspapers could certainly play a positive role when it comes to teaching young people to read newspapers again. According to Haller, they could entice young adults to read and even contribute to a transfer of readership in favor of the paid newspapers. However, bad free newspapers could also have the opposite effect and create an aversion to the newspaper genre, warns Haller. In the long term, Haller sees the free newspaper as a transitional medium because its core target group, the twenty to thirty-five-year-old Urbans, will fill their morning commute with mobile offerings. In ten to fifteen years, he estimates that free newspapers will either go online together with their advertising customers or become paid newspapers.