In another move against print media in supermarkets, the UK Kroger group has removed free newspapers and magazines from its stores. Check out this report from earlier this year.
Kroger will be removing free newspapers from all of its stores, effective Oct. 15. Locally, those publications include The Memphis Flyer, Focus, Memphis Parent, Memphis Health & Fitness, and Best Times.
“We are removing the publication racks from our stores because more publications continue to shift to digital formats, resulting in less customers using the products,” said Teresa Dickerson, corporate affairs manager of Kroger’s Delta division.
Even so, the move may hurt local news organizations.
“It’s a huge blow to Health and Fitness because we move 20,000 magazines a month out of there,” said Amy Goode, the publisher of Health and Fitness.
Free publications rely on a paid advertising business model: Advertisers buy ads with certain assurances that their marketing messages will reach a certain number of customers. This is why having a reliable, wide-ranging distribution point such as Kroger is so important.
I say it is another blow because of moves announced earlier about a branch of Aldi getting out of newspapers.