Free is good, right?

A few years ago, the so-called free newspaper war raged on the streets of Stockholm. Three newspapers under different ownership competed for the open hands and eyes of bus and subway commuters.  Metro was first on the scene in 1995, while Bonnier-owned Stockholm City, with its brigades of red-jacketed distributors, was launched in 2002. Both were published five days a week.

Free newspapers haven't had it easy, to put it mildly. Metro, Stockholm's last surviving five-day-a-week free newspaper, has discontinued nearly all of its other editions in Sweden, as well as many abroad. In September 2008, City cut back distribution to three days a week, and in April 2009, to twice a week. And it's no secret that the newspaper has had a difficult time making a profit. Bonnier Tidskrifter took over in August, with Frodin as publisher.

The obvious question is: Why will Bonnier Tidskrifter succeed where others have failed?

"Although City was published only twice a week, it was still equipped for five days a week," Daniel explains. "It had its own IT department, its own HR department and so on. We saw that we could slim down every area apart from distribution. And if the newspaper could be incorporated into a publishing house like Bonnier Tidskrifter, which has its own IT and HR departments, it could become a profitable business. Now it's also easier to collaborate editorially with our sister publications. With in-house experts, we can produce higher quality editorial pieces."

What does City offer its readers that they can't find elsewhere?

"We're a newspaper that exclusively produces content about Stockholm, for Stockholmers. We don't write about what just happened — we tell readers what's going to happen. We also provide a forum for discussing the issues that matter most to our target group: 20- to 40-year-old Stockholmers. It can be about local transportation, architecture or anything else that people have an opinion on. And in contrast to Metro, which has a national perspective, we have a purely Stockholm perspective. But, of course, we compete for the same advertisers."

What's the biggest difference between the old and the new City?

"We've focused on having more well-known writers. With longer articles, there's also more to read than before, which means that people take the newspaper home with them more often. Clearly, this is something our advertisers appreciate."

While you give away free newspapers, everyone else is talking about charging their online readers. Isn't there a contradiction here?

"It hasn't been as easy to charge for news features online, but we'll see what happens. Fortunately, that's not a problem that we have to worry about. We'll leave that to others."

One British newspaper, Kent on Sunday, went from being free to costing 90 pence. Do you imagine a situation in which readers might pay for City in the future?

"The British newspaper market is very different from the Sweden's, so that's not likely to happen — not within the next five years, in any case."

Just one month ago, it was announced that another free newspaper, Rupert Murdoch's The London Paper, will be discontinued. And the state of the advertising market is grim. Do free newspapers really have a future?

"We know it's possible to make free newspapers profitable. We offer a powerful and effective channel for reaching the right target group, and it seems we're headed in the right direction. As recently as September we were able to nearly reach our budget, and this was with a very tight budget. We count on breaking even in 2010, and on making a profit by 2011, at the latest. With a little help from the economy, this could happen even sooner."