Free as a business model is ready for its close-up. And none are so ready, perhaps, as Metro, a free daily newspaper printed and distributed in over 100 cities worldwide.

To be sure, free involves some sacrifices. One doesn’t read Metro for in-depth analysis; the articles are short, typically no more than five or six paragraphs, and often less. Nor does one expect bylines from big-name journalists; Metro’s reporters are earnest if not always expert. But for a reported 20 million Metro readers in Europe, North America, South America and Asia, that’s just fine. After all, Metro is free.

Now an abbreviated version of Metro is available from its publisher as a widget for Symbian touch-screen phones. This widget delivers news and opinion articles from Metro editions in eight countries: Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States. Readers can also use the widget to share news stories with friends via Facebook and Twitter. And like the print edition, the widget is free.

When you launch Metro, you must first select your language:

This is not as simple as it sounds, however. Metro’s different-language versions are not simply translations of the same stories. Instead, they are entirely different editions. The English-language edition covers the United States and Canada. Spanish is for news from Mexico. And so on. So if you want to find out what’s happening in, say, France, you must switch to Metro’s French-language edition. Can’t read French (or Danish, or Dutch, or Suomi)? Well, Metro is free. Below, to show what I mean, are screenshots, taken just a few minutes apart, of the front pages of the Metro widget’s English, French, and Spanish-language editions. First, here’s the English-language front page:

Now here is the French front page…note the entirely different stories:

And here is the Spanish-language (Mexican, mainly) front page…again, with a whole new set of stories:

That’s the hardest, most confusing part. From there on, Metro is simplicity itself. A home page appears with the latest stories in a handful of categories. You can either select one of the stories, to view it in full. Or you can select a new category (News, Business, Sports, etc.) to see a fuller listing of those stories.

Select a category, and you get an index page — in this case, the Business page:

To read a story that runs longer than one screen (some do!), use your finger to flick or drag it up. Then the Back command brings you back to the home or category index page.

Metro offers a text search, and it works fairly well. Here, for example, are my search results for ‘obama’:

Find a story you want to share with friends? Metro can handle that, too:

My wish list: More coverage from more countries. The ability to select news for a specific city, rather than just an entire country. A way to get U.K. news (Metro’s English-language edition features news from the United States and Canada only). And a single world edition letting me read news stories in English from Manhattan, Mogadishu, and anywhere in-between.

For now, Metro is a cool way to get short, selected news stories on the go. The Metro widget is available in Ovi Store. And did I mention? Metro is free.