New York City’s two free daily tabloids usually compete by seeing how many papers they can shove into the hands of subway riders. Now they are going head-to-head on a different platform — a digital one.
Metro New York, owned by Metro International, is planning a new Web site that may improve its position against its rival, amNew York, which is owned by the Tribune Company. AmNew York already has a robust site that it inherited from the site of the defunct New York Newsday, which was also a Tribune property.
Although the giveaway papers are perhaps best known for capturing the fleeting attention of harried commuters with headlines about celebrities, executives at both papers say the Web will be critical to their growth.
“We view the Internet component of our business as one with tremendous potential, and we’ll be releasing a new site in the not-too-distant future,” said Daniel E. Magnus, the publisher of Metro New York, in a telephone interview.
Metro New York, with a circulation of about 310,000, will replace its current content at ny.metro.us with a site that might look similar to the more established French and Swedish Metro Web sites, Mr. Magnus said. “We haven’t up until this point pursued the business side of the Internet in New York,” he said.
The Web site will be playing catch-up in a crowded online news market. AmNew York has already aggressively tried to send readers online, listing its Web address on its cover and on almost every page.
The paper says that its site receives about 315,000 unique monthly visitors, roughly equal to its print circulation.
Even amNew York’s morning hawkers, who frequently shout out the address of the Web site while handing out papers, wear red vests with “amny.com” printed across their chests and backs.
Meanwhile, Metro’s hawkers and pages have been silent. The paper does not print its Web address on its pages, and the Web site is rather basic in design and content.
“When amNew York became the main footprint for Tribune in the city, we basically just changed the banner” on the Web site from nynewsday.com, said Diane Goldie, the editorial director for amNew York, who oversees the amny.com and newsday.com Web sites.
Ms. Goldie said that amny.com fulfills a niche for up-to-date, metropolitan-area online news.
“We have to be smart in picking our shots,” she said, acknowledging that the Web site does not have the staff or resources of larger news organizations and their online portals.
But she said that the Web site often gets cited on New York-centric blogs like Gothamist, Gawker and Curbed, a sign of its authority with the paper’s “young urban professional” demographic.
“They read the paper on the subway, and you give them something really substantial to go online for,” she said.
Metro and amNew York are the two New York entries in the thriving free daily newspaper market. The papers, with their easy-to-read format, have helped cut into the print circulation of larger metropolitan papers.
But why should commuters continue relying on a free paper’s Web site once they are at their computers?
“If you’re looking for local news, the free papers may be a better voice,” said Barry Parr, a media analyst for Jupiter Research.
“We’re certainly advising papers that they should have Web sites,” he said, “and I don’t think there’s a distinction between paid papers and free papers.”
