The third session of the Indian Newspaper Congress 2008 held a debate on how viable the country's market might be for free newspapers, as many parts of the world are seeing huge growth in the freesheet sector, exchange4media reported Monday.

“Newspaper is a serious tool for dissemination of news. It has distribution and production costs to it. We have to decide whether a free newspaper would give news or whether it would be a product that is selling other products,” Hormusji Cama, publisher of the Bombay Samachar, told the Congress Friday.

The Congress was organised by the Indian Newspaper Society and exchange4media.

Cama also said that because free newspapers must be paid for through advertisements and not readers, advertisers would also want free editorial space, causing the newspaper to not be a “factual rendition of news. No one would want to read it,” he said, according to exchange4media.

From a marketing perspective, Paulomi Dhawan, head of commerce at textile company Raymond, said that the advertiser is the loser when it comes to nearly free, or free, newspapers.

“We are the ones who are funding the free news era. The reader gets three newspapers for the price of one. How long will the client pay for it?” she said. However, the growing literacy in India will fuel growth in the print industry, she predicted.

Vikram Sakhuja, CEO of GroupM India, said that if current newspapers were to go free, the brand's value is decreased: “The minute you go free, you have discounted the brand big time, because when you are a big brand, you can extract a premium from the customer. You make something free, it loses value. The entry and exit barriers become zero.”

PN Balji, of Today newspaper, disagreed, telling the group that his paper, based on the free model format in Singapore, is successful. For a free newspaper to be a success, the content must be top-notch, he said, according to exchange4media.

Today is distributed to selected upmarket homes, universities and colleges (as opposed to mass transit distribution), because those are places advertisers want to reach, Balji said.