“FREE PRESS”, or rather free newspapers. In the last two years we have witnessed a very interesting mass media phenomenon:
the rising of a series of national and local newspapers. This phenomenon, well known in the middle eighties, emerged in the United States of America to land on the shores of the British Dover around the nineties. Consider that in these two big nations that have been just mentioned, the percentage of readers that bought bound of charge newspapers daily was ten times bigger the one in Italy… In the “BelPaese” (“The Beautiful Country”, i.e. Italy), people always haven’t read enough, and for this reason would be desirable that great
initiatives like this one had been put together by us much sooner!!! Now, two years later, a large part of the Italian cities can count with a dozen of new publishing initiatives launched and exclusively supported by
advertising agencies. Also, particularly in the big metropolitan cities like, Milan, Roma and Naples are present “half tabloid” newspapers, that can easily be folded twice and put inside a pocket. Therefore adding one more advantage to free newspapers (they have a practical appeal that bound of charge newspapers lack). This commendable and intelligent initiative had the great advantage of attracting readers from market segments very difficult to reach with traditional newspapers. Unthinkable targeted markets have been reached… There are now newspapers with a “print run” superior to one million copies… The distribution of the great majority of these alternative publications (alternative in the sense that they are free), is made by placing them in containers previously arranged, in which the papers are organized in piles. These distribution containers are placed strategically on train stations or airports waiting rooms and also on the streets, habitually near bars… At the moment everything seems to run as smooth as a baby’s bottom. The readers, having been rescued from the limbo of indolence, are pleased, and also the advertisers of small and medium size, who on recent times had been denied of the opportunity of putting advertises because of the lack of space on bound of charge newspapers. Speaking of happy customers, we can not forget to mention the editors, who had to increase the number of pages because they could not fit all the advertising ads, marketing promotions and editorial articles. I PROPOSE AN IDEA OF MINE: The next frontier will be the creation of a free weekly publication… that at the moment doesn’t exist!!! --- ITALO LIANZA