The Baltimore Sun Media Group, which publishes The Sun, said yesterday that it will start a free daily tabloid and Web site targeting young adults.
The newspaper, b, and Web site, bthesite.com, will launch April 14, focusing on news, sports and pop culture geared to readers in the roughly 18- to 34-year-old range, with a heavy dose of entertainment and nightlife coverage. It also will publish reader-generated content and material from other publications, including RedEye, a young adult-oriented tabloid published by the Chicago Tribune. Both The Sun and the Chicago paper are owned by Tribune Co.
"We believe there's an unserved market segment there, a print and companion Web site to reach young adults in the Baltimore market, and we intend to fill that need by launching b and bthe site.com," said Timothy J. Thomas, Baltimore Sun vice president of business development. "This approach has worked very successfully in other markets."
The company said the paper would be published Monday through Friday and distributed in newspaper boxes, on college campuses and at gathering spots such as restaurants, bars and coffee shops. The company plans to begin with 50,000 copies a day and expand to 100,000 by the end of the year.
Tribune has grappled with declining revenue and competition from electronic media but has had success with newer ventures such as the five-year-old RedEye.
"This is an effort on the part of dailies to try to reach people they haven't been doing a good job of reaching in the past," said John Morton, a media analyst with Morton Research Inc. in Silver Spring. "RedEye was the model for those that have followed," including some smaller dailies that have launched successful free weeklies aimed at younger readers.
RedEye has helped The Chicago Tribune's overall ad revenue by attracting smaller advertisers, such as restaurants and entertainment venues, that might have been priced out of the Tribune, Morton said. At the same time, RedEye has attracted new readers, he said.
Morton said b would need to ramp up the number of distribution points to make up for the lack of an extensive mass transit system that has helped circulation of free dailies in cities such as Chicago and Washington, where the Washington Post Co. distributes Express on the Metro.
The model carries some economic risk but has worked in many cases by reaching advertisers attracted by the targeted nature of the audience, said Steven S. Duke, a director with the Media Management Center at the Medill School at Northwestern University.
Another young adult-targeted paper launched by the Dallas Morning News, called Quick, has succeeded despite a limited mass transit system, Duke said.
"It was the first real proof that a five-day-a-week free tabloid aimed at young adults could work in a community that didn't rely on mass transit," Duke said. "They deliver copies to places where young adults gather - health clubs and gyms and diners, where they know they'll get the traffic."
The tabloid and Web site are the first new products created by the Baltimore Sun Media Group's new business development group, which was formed at the end of December. Thomas said his team looked at publications such as RedEye, Quick and tbt in Tampa Bay, in creating b.
"We've been saying for at least six months or so, we need to be investing in the growth engines that are going to fuel revenue growth here, and that's primarily in interactive and niche print," Thomas said.
The staff of more than 20 will be based in the offices of The Sun's Baltimore County bureau on Pennsylvania Avenue in Towson. The bureau's staff will relocate to either The Baltimore Sun's headquarters on Calvert Street downtown or to the Howard County Bureau in Columbia, but continue covering Baltimore County.
lorraine.mirabella@baltsun.com