Mainstream national media and newspapers although they speak of community and segmentation are essentially a platform that brings  a homogeneous world-view to large geographies. Notoriously conservative, Indian newspapers reluctantly gave bylines to journalists as recently as twenty years ago, and still depend to a large extent on the same large international news agencies. Although they are experiencing high growth, they still make minimal investment in international newsgathering, with the notable exception of cricket coverage. Nevertheless, the business plan of most of the large groups seems to be to expand geographically. For the vernacular papers there is some restriction in national expansion since most languages tend to be regional but for the English language newspapers it is almost a survival strategy. If they do not expand, they can soon expect the arrival of a “national” daily in their territory.

Community newspapers
The concept of community newspapers is not new. It has become fashionable for even owners of large newspapers to speak of “community” at seminars. However, they generally resort to this expression when they are discussing the competition from electronic media. It is presumed that newspapers are more hospitable to the idea of community than television.

There have always been small newspapers in India. Many have now outgrown the tag and this tends to be the main story about the industry since it is the mid-sized papers that are getting organised and growing the most in circulation and ad revenues. What about the small papers, will they be bought out or closed down? And then, over the last twenty years, free community papers, mainly weeklies, have been starting up and growing across the country.

Small media has proved to be successful all over the world, in both urban and rural areas. But when the concept is first introduced to a community, depending on local conditions, special methods need to be adopted to make it work. Coverage in these community newspapers is on issues related to civic amenities, police, health, education, water distribution agencies, schools and colleges, clubs, associations, institutions, shopping and sports, local businesses and local heroes.

Since the paper is free of cost, advertising is the only source of revenue. Advertising is a very important aspect because it supports the paper entirely. The ad rates are much lower than the big city papers, and the target audience is of more interests to local businesses and retailers. Members of the community or neighbourhood use space in these newspapers for personal purposes. Classifieds are inserted at very cheap rates or even free of cost. These have been a big hit with the residents. Personal greetings are displayed and second-hand personal items are being advertised for sale through this paper.

Community newspapers need to be in the vernacular language and need to have immediate relevance to the local community as well. In a country like India where there are so many diverse communities with unique needs, cultures and interests, community newspapers can prove be a powerful tool, speaking out people's thoughts, sharing their problems and finding local solutions.

Weekly, fortnightly, monthly
In South India, community newspapers are free delivered to homes. There are not daily. They are weekly or fortnightly . The Adyar Times and the Anna Nagar Times are the best-known examples of successful community newspapers in South India. The papers are free with an average of 16 pages, and almost 50 per cent of each paper contains advertisements.

In the north, particularly in the national capital region of Delhi there are several free community newspapers -- weekly, fortnightly, or monthly. Samvada is a monthly from sector 18 in Noida, the shopping centre of the new city. It is also published from another six colonies in Delhi — Defence, Greater Kailash I and II, New Friends, Kailash, and Panchsheel. Samvada has a combined circulation of 43,000 copies per issue.

Another is Neighbourhood Flash — a weekly, that is a part of the 78 year-old Tej Bandhu Group. Neighbourhood Flash comes out with 9 editions – 7 editions in South Delhi and separate editions for Gurgaon and Noida. Neighbourhood Flash has a combined weekly circulation of 175,000 copies. The target audience are readers from the 18 to 45 age group especially housewives, and it is distributed free of cost. Editorially the focus is on the local geographical community issues concerning a reader in his immediate surroundings and women's issues. The attempt is to serve the locality with information on their neighbourhood localities – development, civic and shopping.

Keeping with the trend of this free community newspaper Dainik Jagaran the national Hindi daily has come up with a weekly City Plus in Noida and some of the adjacent parts of East Delhi. Seeing the clout of these free papers and as a counter measure, the English national dailies have also started free inserts such as HT Media's NOIDA Line and Bennett Coleman's NOIDA Plus and South Plus and Central Plus for Delhi. This is seen as a competitive measure as they are brought out and distributed by inserting in their main papers on the same days as the free newspapers like Samvada and Flash .

Similarly in Mumbai, Ontrack Suburb is an independent a weekly free newspaper published by Raju Manvani.

Content and advertisement in the free newspaper
The community newspapers are supplying readers with information on municipal, government, NGO's and other organisations' projects and programs. Apart from local politics, resident welfare association news, clubs, municipalities, local personalities, and important telephone numbers are also published. The attempt is to provide editorial content that is professional and objective although the coverage is “locally exclusive” and focused on concerns and issues that are of importance the community.

Estimating readership is always difficult but it is estimated that one per cent of newspapers readers pick up a free community newspaper. There is some indication that readers are increasingly eager to picking up these papers and are reading them and looking for relevant personal information. Community papers are a platform for content like neighbourhood events, colony buzz and gossip, and even municipal politics.

Community free newspapers yield good returns on advertising spend. Advertisers assert that the paper meet the needs of its community because it provides them with local information that is of interest and relevance. Advertisers attribute the paper's success to three factors — good customer service, which they found professional and friendly, they got good value for money as the paper's advertising rates were reasonable and the adverting tends to generate the targeted response.

According to Vinod Agarwal publisher of the free monthly Samvada ,“The success of free newspapers will be a combination of good content and good marketing. They cannot survive in the absence of either. Good content without advertisement support will not go long and advertisement without good content is just a junk ending up in the dustbin. It has to be a combination of readers and advertisers.”

More than half the ads are from small local suppliers like tutors, bakeries, dry cleaners, gift shops, tiffin wala's, grocery and barber shops, auto-mechanics, plumbers and other independent suppliers. These community newspapers have created new advertisers out of a whole new class of service providers who may have nothing but their tools and a cell phone. Bigger or more organised advertisers are also there such as water-tank cleaners, RO water purifier systems, and cable TV, CAS and DTH providers, CAS systems. Furniture suppliers and even office automation suppliers are advertising since they are sensing the important role of the housewife in all purchasing decisions.

High growth
Free community newspapers are really picking up in circulation and demand for new neighbourhood editions seems to be outstripping the entrepreneurial skills of the publishers. One of the publishers we spoke to said that circulation is doubling each year. He also added that 90 per cent of the copies are read and only 10 per cent are thrown away unread.

The almost free dailies
Although free community newspapers are increasing in the country, the competition from the big newspaper giants is not yet visible. The free newspaper is not recognised as big business yet. The distribution and circulation network of newspapers in India is characterised by agents and hawkers who are independent. The distribution channels are not owned by media groups who rely mainly on the agents and hawkers for distribution and cash collection. The newspapers in India are notoriously under-priced and a major share of the copy price is given to the hawkers and agents for distribution. This share can be anywhere from 30 to 80 per cent of the newsstand price. Thus the revenue of the dailies is already heavily dependent on advertising with the copy price not even covering 20 per cent of the newsprint cost. This is also why when predatory pricing wars take place, a large number of copies are directly sold by hawkers for newsprint recycling or given away free at airports and bridge toll booths by the publishers themselves.

Another interesting source of revenue for the hawkers are the countless loose advertisement flyers that are inserted by the neighbourhood agents on behalf of beauty parlors, take-home joints and even organised sector service providers such as cellphone companies and pizza and supermarket chains. For instance in Delhi, the hawkers charge Rs 30 for inserting an ad in 100 copies of a daily. This is called piggy-back advertising and it seems that the large dailies are helpless to prevent these types of distractions and revenue erosions. Since there is a surplus of dailies' vying for paid circulation, they have to go out of their way to keep the hawkers happy.

The trend of predatory or “introductory” pricing was started by the Times of India 's distribution of one Rupee newspapers when it entered a new market. Not satisfied with selling their papers almost free, the national English dailies such as Hindustan Times and DNA are also getting into the totally free daily act. Mumbai Mirror is distributed free along with the main edition of the Times of India . Similarly, the Mumbai based daily start-up DNA , was distributed free in the city's air-conditioned buses for the first few months of its launch. And, of course, you can pick up some of the major dailies for free at domestic airports.

A few years ago, even Mid-day had tried its luck with a free daily, when it launched a community newspaper — Metro , distributed free in Mumbai with a separate edition for each locality or suburb. This was launched with an aim to bring in small time advertisers, who couldn't make it to the main edition.