New Axel Springer daily takes on Poland's quality press
German publishing giant Axel Springer has launched a new daily in its latest foray into the Polish market, a bold venture that has sparked a circulation battle with Poland's biggest quality newspaper.
Targeting young, educated readers, Dziennik (The Daily) aims to take on Gazeta Wyborcza, a centre-left paper which first appeared in 1989 and which has its roots in the Solidarity trade union movement.
Tuesday's first edition of Dziennik, which is modelled on Germany's Welt Kompakt tabloid-format newspaper, had 48 pages and a 16-page sports supplement.
The front page was dominated by a photograph of the aftermath of a suicide attack that killed nine people in Tel Aviv and by a report on the expected entry of a populist party into the Polish government.
The paper also carried an interview with Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz on domestic politics and an interview with famous composer Krzysztof Penderecki.
"We have no mission, we do not want to give lessons to anybody ... we are not sympathisers of any party," said the paper's editor in chief Robert Krasowski in an editorial.
"There are, however, several principles that we are going to defend: democracy, liberty, law and order, the market and a pro-Western stance -- and that's all."
The launch of Dziennik was preceded by a huge publicity campaign. "The campaign was clearly designed to reach a very specific target market," the Press magazine, a specialist monthly that reports on the media market, said Tuesday.
"The Polish daily newspaper market is fairly limited," said Wlodzimierz Giller, an analyst for Deutsche Bank.
"The new daily could extend it slightly, but it will mainly snatch away readers from its competitors," Giller told AFP.
Axel Springer has priced Dziennik at 1.5 zlotys (0.38 euros, 0.46 dollars), around half the cost of its principal rivals, Gazeta Wyborcza and the centre-right Rzeczpospolita.
Gazeta Wyborcza quickly responded, on Friday lowering its cover price to the same level as Dziennik. However, shares in Agora, Gazeta Wyborcza's publisher, plunged.
"Shareholders are afraid of losing part of the advertising market. Gazeta Wyborcza currently holds some 40 percent of the advertising market for the written press," said Giller.
Gazeta Wyborcza is the flagship newspaper of Agora, one of Europe's 20 biggest press groups.
Founded by former dissident Adam Michnik in order to support the Solidarity movement during Poland's first semi-democratic elections in June 1989, Gazeta Wyborcza (Electoral Gazette), sold an average of 448,000 copies per day last year.
Rzeczpospolita had a daily circulation of 182,700 in 2005.
Dziennik did not say how many copies it was aiming to sell, but according to Press magazine, Axel Springer has set a target of 150,000 copies a day.
Axel Springer already owns several publications in Poland, mostly women's magazines. The Polish edition of Newsweek also belongs to its stable.
In 2003 Axel Springer successfully launched the Polish tabloid Fakt, largely modelled on the group's German daily Bild.
Fakt last year notched up average daily sales of 519,000.
Since the beginning of this year, all Polish dailies have seen their sales drop by around 10 percent compared to 2005, with the sole exception of Fakt, whose sales rose by 3.7 percent in January and by 1.6 percent in February on an annual comparison.
AFP
