Financial crisis threatening world's free newspapers, experts say: The global financial crisis poses a major threat to free newspapers worldwide, experts and industry officials said at the first-ever world conference of the industry on Tuesday.
The sector, which is made up of 230 free newspapers in 58 nations with a total daily distribution of 43 million copies, is "extremely vulnerable to a recession", said University of Amsterdam media expert Piet Bakker.
"It will be particularly hard for free newspapers with no operations in other sectors, who are not part of companies with other activities. If you only have advertising, you really have a big problem," he said.
