Here (h/t Long Tail) is an interesting saga of newspaper circulation wars in Denmark, where the arrival on the scene of a new nationwide free newspaper delivered to homes caused turmoil in the market.

Except what I do not understand is why Chris Anderson opens thus:

…the chilling story of the crazy free newspaper war in Denmark that almost killed everyone involved. I thought it was an important cautionary tale of Free gone wrong.

Why chilling? It is rather inspiring. It shows that bad business decisions lead to a mess, which is what ought to happen.

A point not lost on one commenter, Pico:

I also felt a growing unease with the purportedly proof that "Free" is dangerous per se. To me, this tale is the proof of the inanity of carrying a successful strategy into a new market without first identifying the explicit and (above all) the implicit assumptions on which it rests upon, and checking if they are still applicable in said new market…

And see the points made by one of the protagonists on how the arrival of the new free newspaper provoked a storm of other moves by regulators and competitors alike:

Image selling a product when an entire nations news sources are aimed at killing you off as quickly as possible to the point where a front cover story in a national coverage newspaper was about how all the investor money behind Nyhedsavisen came from Russian mafia money (yes libel laws in Denmark are, like the rest of the socialist ideology, unbearably soft)…

Anyway, there I was in the Travellers Club yesterday chatting to a veteran UK newspaper commentator on how the availability of vast quantities of free comment (eg mine) is reducing the viability of comment which people have to pay for (eg his).

Hard to see how the move to totally different models of disseminating such material freely or otherwise won’t be turbulent and painful for many people and businesses?