Philadelphia Metro
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- For the region, see Philadelphia metropolitan area.
Metro is a free daily newspaper in Philadelphia published by TPI Metro Inc., which began publishing on January 24, 2000. Its main competition is The Philadelphia Daily News. In 2004, Metro surpassed The Daily News in circulation, 143,798 to 141,868, to move into second behind 372,297 for The Philadelphia Inquirer's.[1][2] It was the first Metro edition published in North America and the ninth edition since the first in Stockholm in 1995.
Lawyers representing the publishers of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, U.S.A. Today and The New York Times filed an action in Federal Court three days before Metro's first publication to block local transit authority SEPTA from giving what they considered to be a competitive advantage to Metro.[3]
SEPTA signed a five-year contract with TPI Metro. Part of the contract allows SEPTA to produce one page in each edition; however, aside from that page SEPTA has no control over any other aspect of the paper. The contract calls for Metro to pay $45,000 a month to SEPTA, which they stopped paying in March, 2003, claiming SEPTA failed to live up to the terms of the contract.[4] Despite lawsuits and counter-suits, in 2004 TPI Metro PA and SEPTA signed a three-year contract which increased payments to $65,000 a month.
The daily is primarily distributed by old-time newspaper hawkers paid to station themselves in areas with high pedestrian traffic, who offer the free paper to anyone who passes by. In addition, Metro can be found in distinctive green boxes on corners and in train and subway stations, echoing the colorful green and orange template used in all editions. Metro is designed using Apple Macintosh computers running QuarkXpress. There are also Metro editions in two other American cities, New York and Boston which are run by the same publishing company, Metro International.
Metro International, based in the Mayfair section of London, is a subsidiary of the Modern Times Group and the world's leading publisher of free dailies, with 69 editions in 18 countries and 17 languages, including the largest-circulation papers in Paris and Rome.
