The Sunday Times announced this weekend that it will finally be launching its new free daily newspaper, The Times to 127 000 existing subscribers in the cities, thereby extending its brand to a six-day newspaper. It is following a global trend seen in the magazine world in the past few years and capitalised on recently by Caxton with its free suburban magazines and other media houses with free shopping mall magazines. The magazines are really just another specialised advertising vehicle, being low on quality content. It will be interesting to see if the Sunday Times maintains editorial quality as pundits predict that the only way newspapers can beat the social media challenge is through quality content, particularly investigative journalism. Globally, free daily newspaper circulation more than doubled from 2001 to 2005, from 12 million copies in 2001 to 28 million in 2005 - an increase of 137%, according to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), which is holding its global congress in South Africa in June this year. Said Timothy Balding, WAN CEO, in February this year: "While much attention has been focused on digital development, the print product is also changing. There has been a proliferation of new genres of newspapers, targeting new audience segments and generating creative marketing and distribution scenarios. And the surge of new, free titles thrust into the paid-for market is the result of many publishers rethinking the cover-price revenue model in place for more than 400 years." Free newspapers tend to be targeted, niche, promote community and have a strong distribution model to offset the different revenue model. Ironically, according to trend reports in this sector, people are reading less and sourcing free info off the Internet, leading to declining newspaper sales - but this environment has also grown free newspapers and magazines which focus on maximising ad revenues by distribution to as many readers as possible. Happy reading! Louise Marsland, editor, editor@bizcommunity.co