The New York Times is buying a 49 per cent interest in Metro Boston, a free daily paper given away to commuters in New England.
The Times is paying $16,500,000 for its stake in the paper which was launched three years ago .Metro Boston prints about 200,000 copies a day and claims to reach 300,000 readers, most of them in their 20s and 30s. The Times has in the past eschewed the idea of giveaway papers.
Several major papers have recently launched giveaways in Chicago, Washington and Dallas. A new one is about to be launched in Washington.
Metro Boston is part of Metro International, the Stockholm-based company that publishes free papers in Europe and already has five free papers in the US.
By Jeffrey Blyth in New York
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