A new player takes a bet on old media
MADRID: Starting a newspaper in a mature economy these days may seem an act of folly. But the publishers and editors of Pъblico, a Spanish title that hit the newsstands last month, are convinced they can defy the ravages of new technology and freesheets.
Pъblico, a small, full-color daily that costs 50 euro cents, hopes to turn what its editors view as one of the enduring failings of the Spanish newspaper market to its advantage: the fact that there is little in the way of a popular press, and nothing directed at young, left-leaning readers.
The newspaper is billing itself as a breath of fresh air in a market dominated by heavily partisan newspapers, written disproportionately by middle-aged intellectuals for middle-aged intellectuals.
With a bold front that features a single headline - reminiscent of The Independent in Britain - and a cover price half that of its rivals, Pъblico said it hoped to draw readers between the ages of 25 and 45, said Ignбcio Escolar, the newspapers editor.
“The Spanish newspaper market has been a failure over the past century,” said Escobar, 31, during a visit to the modern offices that house the newspapers 120 editorial staff, most of whom are in their 30s. After the transition to democracy that followed the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, he said, “we set up a press that was highly politicized.”
The paper, which has been printing 250,000 copies daily since it was introduced Sept. 26, has no editorials, no coverage of bullfights, no death notices and no advertisements for prostitutes, all staples of Spanish mainstream newspapers. At 64 pages, it is slimmer than its Spanish rivals, which often run at a hefty 90 pages.
On the surface, readership figures support Pъblicos view that there is a gap in the market and suggest that the Spanish newspaper industry is not caught in the fast decline of many markets in Europe and the United States.
Newspaper sales have fallen much more slowly in Spain than elsewhere in Europe, where they have been bitten hard by the explosion of the Internet and mobile communications, and by competition from freesheets.
Klaus Schцnbach, professor of communication science at the University of Amsterdam, said it was very unusual for new titles to survive in a mature economy but not unheard of, citing the case of 20 cent,a tabloid-size paper aimed at young German readers started in 2004 by the Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group. The conservative Spanish paper La Razуn, started in 1990, is the most recent entrant into Spains general newspaper market and sells about 200,000 copies a day.
Spain, which has enjoyed a decade-long economic boom and has one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in Europe, was one of the few European countries where newspaper sales rose between 1996 and 2005. Sales have fallen about 2 percent over the past two years, according to the Association of Spanish Newspaper Editors. Broadband penetration, while growing fast, is still low in Spain at 15 of every 100 households, about half that of leaders like Denmark and the Netherlands.
Freesheets, rather than stealing market share in Spain, have been converting nonreaders into readers, filling a gap left by the lack of Spanish tabloids. Circulation of freesheets has shot from one million to about five million in the past five years, according to the World Association of Newspapers.
This is partly because newspaper readership in Spain - a country of conversationalists who crowd sidewalk cafйs and village squares - is among the lowest in Europe. The countrys three main national newspapers, El Paнs, ABC and El Mundo, do not sell a million copies between them.
Figures from the World Association of Newspapers show that about four million newspapers were sold each day last year in Spain, which has a population of about 40 million, compared with nearly double that number in France, where the population is about 60 million.
“The Iberian peninsular is very problematic in terms of newspaper readership,” Schцnbach said by telephone. “Part of it has to do with dictatorships, but its also a cultural thing” that extends across southern Europe.
It is the population served by the freesheets that Pъblico hopes to attract.
“Freesheets have encouraged a lot of people to read every day, and we believe they are potential buyers of a second paper,” said Jaume Roures, one of Pъblicos main backers and an executive of Mediapro, a powerful media company based in Barcelona. Roures said that Pъblico aimed to break even in five years, but declined to say how much had been invested in the paper so far.
