It’s sometimes helpful to look at past perspectives on youth news consumption patterns to help gauge what has and has not worked.

This article from 2004 speculated that young people are increasingly unwilling to pay for news information. The strategies offered involved a) introducing free newspapers as a way of introducing youth to the habit of newspaper reading.

In 2008, we’ve seen the results of that approach. In the Netherlands, and Finland, almost half of those surveyed in Youth Media DNA read a free newspaper at least once a week. In the U.S. however, free newspaper readership hovers at just under 15%, probably because they are not widely available.

Interestingly, however, free newspaper reading doesn’t appear to be driving anything other than free newspaper reading. Few people surveyed describe them as credible, relevant, or good for depth or breadth of coverage. And few youth say that free newspapers play an important role in their news diet.

So the experiment with free newspapers appears to only made an impact in so far as it still makes sense as business model. With the advent of other mobile content delivery systems, it will be interesting if free newspapers will be able to defend their market share among youth. If, in the next years, smart phones take off (and cell phone companies charge prices people are willing to pay for mobile content), what will young people opt for?

This article about Metro’s continuing troubles does not bode well for the future of free newspapers.

Newspaper websites are much more sophisticated than ever before. Many newspaper companies either partner with free newspapers or sell some of their own.