Vue Weekly and Metro Edmonton are the most common free newspapers found in bins and newsstands around the city. During rush hours, they lie on seats and tucked in corners of Edmonton transit buses and trains. To find out how these magazines get around town, I get in contact with the distribution managers from both companies.
GreenLine Distribution delivers Vue Weekly in Edmonton, as well as to Sherwood Park, Fort Saskatchewan, Nisku, Leduc, Devon, Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, and Saint Albert. An independent contractor delivers Vue to Jasper. A total of 23,000 copies of Vue are printed and distributed every week (predominantly within Edmonton city limits) to coffee shops, grocery stores, cafes and to the 200+ bright yellow street boxes scattered throughout the city. “Unlike most printed news,” the Vue distribution manager tells me, “Vue’s print run has decreased very slightly over the years; the paper has had a loyal readership since its inception in 1995.”
The Vue trucks you might have seen around Whyte or Jasper are GreenLine’s main transportation--a fleet of 8 small diesel engine, Japanese imported vehicles. “On and off since 2007, the vehicles have been run on biodiesel. The truck [you commonly see on Whyte] was once a fire truck in rural Japan in the early 1990’s; the writing on the side is the name of the town it serviced. It was sold to a collector in Edmonton in the mid 2000’s, who then sold it to us.”
Metro News Edmonton is most known for its fleet of promoters and carriers that hand out copies of their news at busy transit centers across the city. The distribution manager tells me Metro is “composed of three parts: promoters and carriers that hand out copies at the busier stations and hand deliver to tower offices, shops and cafes, free vending boxes that are controlled by distribution software, and thirdly, bulk bundles delivered via truck to cafes, shops and offices. We average a pick up of 96% daily….meaning we strive for only 4% unread copies returned.”
