Switzerland’s final printed free commuter newspaper has bowed out. '20 Minutes', the country’s best-known free daily, published its last print edition on Tuesday, bringing an end to a 26-year
run that reshaped how Swiss commuters consumed news.
The decision, announced by publisher TX Group over the summer, closes a chapter not only for the title but for an entire model of journalism. With the paper’s disappearance, the familiar blue distribution boxes that once lined railway stations and tram stops across the country are headed for history—some destined for museum collections.
To mark the occasion, ‘20 Minutes’ released a special farewell edition across German-, French- and Italian-speaking Switzerland. The paper looked back on its own rise, from an upstart free sheet to a daily fixture of the morning commute.
Launched in December 1999, ‘20 Minutes’ was a disruptor long before the term became fashionable. At a time when digital news had yet to reach mass audiences, it offered concise reporting at no cost, tailored to readers on the move. At its peak, nearly 600,000 copies a day were stacked in its blue boxes, supplemented by teams of young distributors handing out bundles at busy stations.
Competitors followed—among them ‘Metropol’, ‘.CH’, ‘Blick am Abend’ and ‘News’—but most failed to survive the shifting economics of print. In the end, ‘20 Minutes’ proved no exception. Declining print advertising revenues made the free daily model untenable. The brand will now continue solely online, via its website and app.
That transition is eased by the paper’s early investment in digital platforms, which helped it build a large online audience well before print went into decline. Other publishers have already drawn similar conclusions. ‘Le News’, for example, abandoned its print edition more than a decade ago, citing the high costs of printing and distribution for a relatively modest circulation.
The final print run of ‘20 Minutes’ marks the end of an era for commuter journalism in Switzerland—and underscores just how decisively the internet has rewritten the business of free news. Photo by Hadi, Wikimedia commons.