Danish Comedy News: Free news papers are unfair!

Just watched a Danish tv program “Penge” as a podcast. This is a personal finance oriented program from the DR the Danish government broadcaster. The program was about a new series of competing free news paper distributed to households in certain attractive towns for advertisers.

So one of the big problems they found is that they don’t get distributed equally to everyone. For example they aren’t distributed in the Copenhagen neighborhood of Nørrebro which is less prosperous than the neighborhood of Frederiksberg.

They interviewed people on the street in Nørrebro, who universally thought it was unfair and discriminatory. Someone should do something. The first interviewee in particular was funny. They listed him as a welfare recipient and he said “But we are at least as prosperous as elsewhere”. Of course the family who reviewed the first of these newspaper were a bit too intellectual to be a target as well. “Not enough about politics and too many pictures. I suppose it would be good if you can’t read too well”, said the mother with a smirk.

I have no idea if these papers will succeed. Their free sister papers that are distributed in public transport have definitely been an economic success. So while lots of Danish people would like to appear all intellectual and talk bad about these papers, I think they serve a pretty good purpose.

However the real comedy to me is that all of a sudden free newspapers are a right, not a privilege. This is what 50+ years of social democratic brain culturing will do to a formerly proud and independent people.