A new phase of print capitalism was launched at the transitionfrom the twentieth to the twenty-first century with the appearanceof free dailies circulated in the large cities of the Western world.The market performance of this form of press depends strongly onthe non-price quality of its news, which is produced for and usedby a public that accepts its reading will be interrupted by adverts.However, what are the socio-cultural frames within which this non-price quality is defined? The current article explores the value of“banal cosmopolitanism”as a driving force of this non-price qual-ity. The investigation is based on a case study of the newspaperL’essentielin Luxembourg.