Metro US may soon be no Longer
Amongst the gloomy stories of declining revenues for newspapers, we always thought there was a glimmer of hope for niche magazines and community dailies and weeklies, and for the most part, I still say this is the case. The US extension of the Metro however, “sort of” makes a liar out of me.
Metro International announced that it might soon have to close the US branch of its worldwide-distributed Metro.
The Metro falls into the category of a daily community paper, that is generally filled with local editorial, timely national or international news coverage, a lot of entertainment and local events. The Metro too, usually finds itself distributed in an urban core, around transportation routes. So, given its distribution footprint and free pick up methodology, you would think this community daily would be doing a lot better. This makes me question the leadership and or internal processes that have led up to this point. For many publishers, the Metro “make up” is their ideal recipe to reach local markets. Many publishers would die for a “Metro like” opportunity. All this to say that something else must be going on internally, and I don’t think we can blame this one solely on the economy. In fact, the New York Metro reported 21% growth in revenue last year, while the others reported a decline. It sounds to me like if they wanted to save this title in the US they could, but direction seems to be lacking on what levers need to pulled and in what direction.
In the US, Metro is distributed in New York, Boston and Philadelphia only.
