Liverpool Daily Post to goes free while Birmingham Post considers position
Liverpool Daily Post has confirmed that it will distribute around a third of its copies free in the city centre.
Trinity Mirror, the group’s publisher, will target the central business district of the city, as well as passersby, as it aims to target the professional ABC1 market.
The announcement comes as speculation mounts over whether The Birmingham Post will introduce a similar part-paid for, part-free distribution in the coming months.
From mid-November, as many as 4,000 free editions of the Liverpool Daily Post will be distributed to city centre businesses between Monday and Friday. Branded merchandisers will hand out a further 2,000 copies throughout key areas of the city.
The regional newspaper industry was hit hard in 2005, with some titles suffering falls of almost 12 per cent in circulation.
The decision follows similar moves made by other regional newspapers, such as the Manchester Evening News (MEN), which gave away around 50,000 copies in the centre, while maintaining the cover price outside of the city.
At the time, the Guardian Media Group, which owns the MEN, said that the move was made in order to help grow the group’s portfolio of products in Manchester. Distribution of the free edition of the MEN quickly jumped from 50,000 to 60,000 and the paper was quick to hail the change a success, especially in growing its young and wealthy readership.
Trinity Mirror is thought to view the change as an opportunity to raise its profile through having an increased presence in the city. However, at the time of going to press there were no representatives for the group available to discuss the paper’s decision to introduce the free editions.
Last month, Liverpool Daily Post’s editor Jane Wolstenholme announced that she would be leaving the paper to pursue a new career as an author and PR manager.
Wolstenholme is joining forces with her husbank, former Liverpool Post & Echo journalist Jon Brown, to launch a new public relations company.
She has been editor of the paper since 2002 and will leave early next year.