AddThis SmartLayers

Local World to launch new paid-for weekly in New Year

Regional publisher Local World is to launch a new paid-for weekly newspaper in January in a town currently covered by an established Johnston Press title.

The Grantham Target will be the latest edition to LW’s Target series in Lincolnshire which already includes titles in Sleaford, Boston and East Lindsey.

The new paper will be priced at 50p compared to established JP weekly the Grantham Journal which has a cover price of 95p.

Lincolnshire Media publisher Steven Fletcher announced the move in a speech at last night’s Lincolnshire Echo Business Awards.

He said: “We know that readers in Lincolnshire value the content and range of advertising in the Target Series, and at 50p it’s fantastic value for money.”

“Until recently, the Target Series was part-free, part-paid. We’ve taken all the frees out of the market and the paid-for circulation has grown very well.”

The new title will launch on 7 January with a companion website due to go live in December.  A Twitter feed @GranthamTarget has already gone live.

It will be edited by Adam Moss, who joined Lincolnshire Media from the Nottingham Post in 2012 and already edits the Sleaford and Boston Targets.

He said: “The Targets are a well-known brand in large parts of Lincolnshire and we feel Grantham is the ideal place to go into next. It’s a very newsy area, with a real mix of residents.

“I’m looking forward to getting stuck in and making sure we give a voice to communities, individuals, and special interest groups across Grantham.”

The move has already won the backing of Tory MP Nick Boles who represents Grantham and Stamford in Parliament.

He said: “Grantham is a place where lots is happening and the very welcome launch of Grantham Target just confirms it.

“As the town grows and seizes new opportunities there will be plenty for a new weekly newspaper to cover. I look forward to working with Adam Moss and his team.”

According to the most recent ABC figures, the paid-for editions of the Target series in Boston and Sleaford had a combined circulation of 12,464.  The East Lindsey edition had a free distribution of 11,068 but has since gone paid-for.

The Grantham Journal last published an audited circulation figure in 2o13 when its average weekly sale was 14,072.

22 comments

You can follow all replies to this entry through the comments feed.
  • October 22, 2014 at 8:59 am
    Permalink

    JP should drop a lot of their free papers too. Bluntly, some are generic rubbish with little local news and often so thin they should be reported to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Newspapers.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 9:05 am
    Permalink

    Will be interesting to see what JPs new marketing bod (see HTFP) makes of its freebies. They are a very poor marketing face for the company and obviously have little or no reporter input.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 9:30 am
    Permalink

    So much for LW , everything is digital future, but fair play for recognising that particular folly.

    Quality paid for weeklies will become the backbone of the regional business, many dailies started that way so its only back to their roots in the new economics of newspapers.

    Mass delivery frees are increasingly irrelevant as most grew out of property advertising initiatives by entrepreneurs who took advantage of the inability of established publishers to deliver cheap full colour. That in part due to sluggish investment and intransigent unions. Of course the mainstays of property and motors have now largely gone to digital.

    However their will still be a place for elective pick ups (metro) in large cities. In smaller marketplaces they will also have a role in retaining an audience during the transition to weekly.

    All JP’s new marketing supremo needs to know really.

    Grantham will be an interesting little battle to watch.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 11:03 am
    Permalink

    Gang of Four got it. “QUALITY paid for weeklies”. Not the User Generated Copy and sent-in pictures substandard hardly edited or checked rubbish foisted on readers at present. There IS still a future for papers. But it must be high quality or they are doomed.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 12:02 pm
    Permalink

    We’ve had almost two years of ‘digital first’ directives rammed down our throats by the Loco World management brains trust…and now they start getting all excited about print. Who ARE these people?!

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 12:05 pm
    Permalink

    Hope no-one has spotted we’re making it up as we go along and have no real idea what we’re doing. Oh, they have.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 12:08 pm
    Permalink

    Presumably, the promised “companion website” will supply a first rate, minute by minute/hour by hour feed of news from the area, thus negating any real need for anyone to spend money on a newspaper which is just a paper digest of all this free content? Because this is the case for 100% of the rest of Local World’s portfolio. #madness

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 12:11 pm
    Permalink

    The scene is the Local World boardroom. The City analysts look grim. Up pipes a voice: “Look, money men….we CAN do ‘growth’. We are launching these amazing interactive, digestible, hand downloadable, customer interfaced products called…..newspapers. Give us some more capital; pretty please.”

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 12:15 pm
    Permalink

    If Mr Fletcher wants a model exercise in how to launch a newspaper, then he could do worse than look at how they handled the Western Morning News on Sunday down here.
    I pretty much think they ticked every box in how NOT to do it….

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 12:28 pm
    Permalink

    Local World are making it up as they go along. This defies all their previous logic, as confusing as it might be.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 1:05 pm
    Permalink

    Ah, but even a soupçon of profit eked from the marketplace through a short term venture means cash in the pockets of Local World shareholders, both executives on the management team and the corporates ‘hiding’ behind the fig leaf which is the company’s purpose. THAT’S the game for LW…not strategic long term investment. Look at it through that prism and everything the company does makes perfect sense.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 1:14 pm
    Permalink

    Love LW logic – you provide the content and then you pay for it. Trebles all round!

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 1:16 pm
    Permalink

    We call our managing director Sterling…because that’s all he is interested in. Oh, HE gets what Local World bosses want, all right – and is royally rewarded for obliging.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 1:28 pm
    Permalink

    So, not only are Local World launching a brand new paid-for weekly in someone else’s patch, but they are doing it in January. Not the best time to start a new paper, one would have thought. Furthermore, they are giving the opposition two months warning of their intentions.
    The Target series’ paid-for circulations have been “growing very well” yet we’ve heard nothing about this at a time when newspaper sales have been plunging all over the U.K. for months and months.
    Are Johnston Press and Local World doing some kind of deal behind the scenes?

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 1:43 pm
    Permalink

    In fairness, Sid Vicious, other WMN columnists this week offered us a) the travails of the family au pair returning to Spain; b) some uninspired Westminster ‘insight’ which a first year sixth form politics student could have knocked up and c) yet more excruciating father and son whimsy from their magazine columnist. So maybe Branston’s the best they have – let’s have a Song for Guy!

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 4:37 pm
    Permalink

    I can’t decide if the commenters here are anti-Local World, anti-Johnston Press or simply anti-anyone doing anything to develop the industry.

    What’s the best time of year to launch a newspaper, Alice? When did you last do it?

    I guess people who read HTFP would rather more papers close.

    Or are we all waiting for this to fail to gloat and say “told you so”?

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 22, 2014 at 8:58 pm
    Permalink

    Grantham is a place where there is a lot happening? Really? What is the local MP on?

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 23, 2014 at 1:36 am
    Permalink

    No mention of what happened to the Louth Target, Spilsby Target, Horncastle Target and the very short-lived Spalding Target. I give it 18 months before it disappears. I mean, have you seen one lately? Talk about a high ad ratio.

    Within three months of launch, it’ll be down to two, maybe three, local leads with the rest being generic content rehashed from the Echo. Surely no Grantham resident will want to pay 50p for that?

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 23, 2014 at 10:33 am
    Permalink

    Re Pete oop North:
    I can’t say when the “best” time of the year is to launch a paper in Grantham (it depends to a certain extent on local events), but what I am sure about is that the worst time anywhere is just after Christmas when everybody has spent up and everything is closed down for winter.
    I don’t think many contributors to this site want to see papers close, but they are rightly concerned because the industry is in freefall.
    Jobs are being lost and careers wrecked because of incompetent managements which are only interested in protecting the boardroom.
    I have helped start newspapers, one of which is still going after 30 years, but I won’t bang my own drum, thank you!

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • October 23, 2014 at 11:32 am
    Permalink

    In answer to Pete oop north, I have no desire whatsoever to see the WMN on Sunday, or for that matter any other new title, fail. Far from it.

    For what it’s worth, I think it’s a good-looking paper and that the magazine, West, is excellent. Unfortunately, as good as the magazine might be, that alone isn’t going to deliver anywhere near enough sales to make the title sustainable. Nor, IMO, is an editorial philosophy that clearly attaches far more importance to delivering twee mumsy tales than unearthing proper, agenda-setting news.

    And that, it seems to me, is where we’re at; there are lots of posters, such as myself, on this website who are passionate about the future of local newspapers, have friends who work on the WMN, and find it hard to sit on the sidelines and say nothing as the powers that be manoeuvre themselves further up the proverbial creek without a paddle or, apparently, any idea what one looks like.

    Tell me again, how many copies is the WMN on Sunday selling?!

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)