A Newspaper War In Geneva – Not Exactly the World’s Most Flamboyant Newspaper Market -- And Yet Two Major Publishing Houses Are Fighting for Supremacy in the Free Newspaper Arena

Philip M. Stone March 15, 2006

The Tribune de Geneve was having a real problem. With no free newspapers in town, but with Geneva’s residents itching to get in on the “free” newspaper craze flowing across Europe it was just a natural to lift the unlocked lid of the honor boxes around town and take a newspaper (in the old days it wasn’t necessary to have locked boxes for the scrupulous Swiss would never think of stealing a newspaper – must now be the foreigners in town!) The situation got so bad that the newspaper devoted a couple of front pages to the fact it was not free, and it posted signs on its boxes declaring it was not free.

Six months later and Geneva has two legitimate free newspapers battling it out, primarily in Geneva but elsewhere in the French-speaking part of the country, and it is a battle of publishing titans – Edipresse and Tamedia.

In one corner is Le Matin Bleu published by the mighty Lausanne-based Edipresse that launched in October, 2005.. One would think Edipresse should have the French-speaking market sewn up with its flurry of paid-for newspapers in the region, including the Tribune de Geneve. Launching a free newspaper while not affecting the circulation of its paid-for dailies seemed a natural extension, especially by enticing advertisers with joint deals.

But along comes Tamedia, publisher of the German language 20 minutes in Switzerland, having bought out Schibsted. It has now launched its French language 20 Minutes. Tamedia’s experience is in the much larger German-speaking part of Switzerland where it has had tremendous success with 20 Minutes that is now, by far, Switzerland’s leading circulation daily newspaper having dethroned Ringier’s Blick in 2004 even though Blick had switched to tabloid to try and save the day.

And while 20 Minutes cannot offer advertising tie-ins with other French language newspapers in the region, it can offer a national package – the French and German editions of 20 Minutes as well as a French-language web site. It’s too soon to tell who wins – both are circulating around 100,000 copies daily – but the uptake on both newspapers does appear to be significant.

Le Matin Bleu seems to have wider distribution area because of its October start. Its boxes are not just in the center of town, including of course the one railway station that brings in the commuters, but also in the suburbs outside supermarket stores and next to other newspaper boxes. 20 Minutes’ somewhat larger boxes (interestingly both have blue as their home color) are found for now just in the center of Geneva and haven’t made it out to the suburbs yet. But that will surely come with a little time.

So is there much difference between them. Somewhat embarrassingly, on 20 Minutes first day both it and Le Matin Bleu ran the same Champions League football match picture on the front page.

Perhaps one indication of how the editorial will differentiate itself comes from how each newspaper wrote about the closing of the Geneva Car Show, Europe’s most prestigious annual auto extravaganza where many new models from around the world are launched.

Le Matin Bleu on page 2 printed two pictures – one of the Daimler-Chrysler ceo peddling his bicycle inside the exhibition hall to the Mercedes stand, and another showing the front of the new Ferrari. The story was a straight report on how this year’s attendance was much worse than in previous years because of the awful weather that Geneva experienced that week that kept away many French and German visitors.

The same subject in 20 Minutes appeared on page 3 with just one picture – that of a model wearing a sexy knee-high boot sitting on a red sports car with the picture cropped to show only from the waist down. The story was all about how escort girls have a field day during Auto Show week!

Both papers that day led their front pages on the Formula 1 race on the Sunday in Bahrain but thankfully this time each used different pictures.

Each newspaper says it will be from 32-36 pages – on the Monday Le Matin Bleu was 32 pages while 20 Minutes was 36 – and both seemed to have plenty of advertising although only their publishers know the terms on which that advertising appeared.

Having looked at Le Matin Bleu often since its launch this writer has found you can usually be done with it inside 10 minutes. 20 Minutes seemed truer to its name, a more interesting read, but certainly one can be done with it inside its intended reading time. 20 Minutes says its daily print run is about 120,000 copies distributed at some 130 boxes on the commute run from Lausanne to Geneva and at some 250 boxes at other public transport sites. Le Matin Bleu claims some 400 distribution sites with a print run of around 100,000.

Both are aimed at the young, urban, working populations. 20 Minutes has also launched with a full service web site with which it will offer cross-media deals, but Le Matin Bleu for now has just a blog site.

Edipresse may get a bonus out of this. Now that there are free newspapers perhaps people will stop stealing the Tribune de Geneve. On the other hand, will they buy it when there are two free newspapers in town?

ftm Follow Up & Comments