While an Australian commuter paper makes a two-day comeback, readers of London’s Evening Standard have been told to expect to see it only once a week.
News Corp is bringing back Melbourne’s mX again in a promotion for the city’s Rising music and arts festival.
Some 60,000 of the special mX Rising editions – guest edited by Brodie Lancaster – are being distributed at key CBD train stations.
The original mX launched in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in 2001 as part of a battle with then rival Fairfax Media, and folded in 2015. A similar promotion was organised with brewer CUB in 2018.
Meanwhile in London, the Evgeny Lebedev-owned Evening Standard is cutting back from daily to weekly after reporting substantial losses.
Chairman Paul Kanareck told staff that reshaping the business would involve creation of a “new weekly newspaper” to replace the paper, which launched as The Standard in 1827 and went free-distribution in 2009. Its last ABC-audited distribution was 274,538, about a third of that a decade before.
Kanareck blamed short commuting weeks and wi-fi for the impact on its viability. The company reported its sixth straight year of losses in the 2021-22 financial year, at -GBP£16.4 million (-A$31.4 million) pre-tax.
Another London freesheet, City AM cut its Friday print edition in January last year, before going into administration that July. It was later bought by online retailer THG.
Pictured: Better days – unloading the London Evening Standard at Chancery Lane station in 2014 (photo Philafrenzy)