The economics of free newspapers: the business value of banal cosmopolitanism in the city of flows

Abstract

A new phase of print capitalism was launched at the transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century with the appearance of free dailies circulated in the large cities of the Western world. The market performance of this form of press depends strongly on the non-price quality of its news, which is produced for and used by a public that accepts its reading will be interrupted by adverts. However, what are the socio-cultural frames within which this non-price quality is defined? The current article explores the value of “banal cosmopolitanism” as a driving force of this non-price quality. The investigation is based on a case study of the newspaper L’essentiel in Luxembourg.