Spanish politicians competing for next month's election are wooing free newspapers, whose readership now outstrips the traditional press, says a Reuters report.
A free daily diet of entertainment and human interest stories geared to the Internet generation, with politics limited and simplified, has seen freesheet circulation rise to about 1 million readers each per day. This is double the circulation of Spain's most-read general daily, El Pais, which costs 1 euro per copy.
Some details from the report:
"Politicians are trying to hook our readers — who are young and apolitical," said Arsenio Escolar, editor at free daily 20 Minutos, which has one of Spain's most popular news webs and has already run interviews with the two main political party leaders.
Free papers are distributed at metro stations or on city streets and readers are encouraged to leave them behind so someone else can look at them. There are now four titles in Madrid.
"I think free papers exist because of the advertising they carry, and people pick them up because they're free. It distracts you while you travel and sometimes they have useful information," said Luis Cruz, a 56-year-old writer. "But I get my news from the television," he added.
Some 45 percent of the free dailies' readership is less than 35 years old, data show, another interesting demographic for politicians keen to bring on board the younger voter.
Added to that, half their readers are women -- versus 38 percent readership by women at the serious newspapers, according to Spain's last general media survey.
"We're paying a lot of attention to free newspapers. They have millions of readers and their content is very popular and less radicalised, less political (in their bias) than the main newspapers. We are trying to take care of them," a government source said.
El Pais is rarely critical of the ruling Socialists while main rival El Mundo often takes a direct slug at the government. On one recent front page El Mundo printed a poster of the prime minister smiling a promise of full employment on the same day the monthly jobless jumped by its highest number on record. Both newspapers however have one of Spain's top ten most visited Web sites.
The actual influence of free newspapers — a new phenomenon in Europe, arising from a new media business model — is largely untested, according to Natalie Fenton, Senior Lecturer in media at Goldsmiths, University of London.
"It's very hard to pin down ... there is lots of research on how many papers go out but how do you peg a particular influence on a newspaper?" she said. "Research shows that an increase in free newspapers has meant the demise of others," she said.
Internet is not being widely used in campaigning, and political parties have paid it little attention until the last minute, says Gumersindo Lafuente, editor of news Web site Soitu.es and former editor of El Mundo's leading news website.
