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Dyson at Large: Another great, family-owned newspaper

I honestly had no intention for this to become a trend, but I came across a fantastic, family-owned newspaper when passing through Berkshire at the tail-end of last month.

A paid-for weekly with no adverts on page one – no room for them indeed, with more than 1,160 words of news copy on the front of Thursday 28 July’s edition of the Newbury Weekly News.

Not that the title was without commercial acumen: there were more than 170 display ads in the main 72-page paper, plus a 32-page ‘Newbury Home Search’ property supplement and another 95 display ads in the monthly ‘Out & About’ magazine inside.

The content was decent hard news with a touch of hope and local identity, as can be seen on the front page.

‘Born safe and sound after head-on crash’ was a sound splash headline, with everyone in the rural area bound to have heard of the accident and the paper then revealing a rare joyous ending.

This 500-word picture lead was accompanied by a gritty, concerning second lead: ‘Cuts will take 259 police officers off front-line duty’.

Readers of the 144-year-old paper were then given four 50-odd word write-offs to a mixture of light and shade inside: ‘11-year-old chats to the stars at Cars 2 premiere’; ‘Photo competition for proms king and queen’; ‘Stabbed teenager back home from Greece’; and ‘Tributes to worker who dies in Parkway accident’.

The left-hand boost column in orange was a little strange, but was ‘lifted’ by the balloon competition (excuse the pun) on this occasion and is not, I hope, an every-week feature.

Inside, the best tale for me was one that reflected a commendable depth of community spirit in the neighbourhood served by the News.

‘Spared shopkeeper thanks the community’ read the page seven lead headline, telling how former sub-postmaster Hasmukh Shingadia escaped a jail sentence for fraud after customers overwhelmed  the judge with support for the defendant.

“I’ve never before received so many tributes to the character of a defendant and I’m deeply impressed,” said Recorder Peter Wallis. “You’re clearly valued in the local area.”

Without going into too much detail, naïve Shingadia had ‘borrowed’ £16,000 from the Post Office tills as a short-term loan to balance his general store books, but was caught out by a chance audit. Although guilty, everyone believed his intention to repay, including the judge who gently admonished him with a 200-hours community service order.

There were several other examples of real news graft, including: ‘38 women in labour turned away from Royal Berkshire’ leading page three; a tale describing how the council was accused of ‘Lethargy after closure of museum’ leading page six; and ‘Anger over school’s alcohol and entertainment licence’ leading page nine.

I liked the accurate ease of the headlines, consistent efforts even being made as far back as page 67 in a cricket lead that read ‘Thatcham smacked back to the bottom’.

Although the Newbury title was a new one for me, its skills have not been overlooked by the industry in recent years, The Newspaper Society awarding it the Best Paid-For Weekly Newspaper trophy in 2006.

And before cynics dismiss it as another example of a newspaper stuck in the past, just take a look at its busy, up-to-date daily website, Newbury Today, teeming with more ads.

With the stylish strapline ‘Powered by the Newbury Weekly News’, this won a hat-trick of awards in 2007 – The Newspaper Society’s Website of the Year, its Weekly Website of the Year and the Picture Editors’ Awards Newspaper Website of the Year.

First published in 1867 by Walter Blacket and Thomas Wheildon Turner, the paper has been an independent, family-owned business ever since, with the current proprietors Blacket Turner & Co echoing the original founders. They even still possess their own printing press.

The News cover 300 square miles of West Berkshire, serving a population of around 150,000. Of these, 19,448 buy it for 65p a week, with penetrations of more than 50% in its main towns of Newbury, Thatcham, Hungerford and Lambourne.

The name of editor Brien Beharrell belongs in a novel, and the Newbury Today website’s declaration that content is created by a 25-strong newsroom assisted by “a network of loyal village correspondents upon which the paper has depended for rural news since its inception” certainly sounds like fiction in this day and age.

But a story count of 194 in 33 news and feature pages, plus another 73 reports and a half page of results and tables in eight pages of sport, appears to back up these proud claims.

One other thing I liked about the Newbury Weekly Times: its fine, inspiring and traditional reader competitions, with ‘Win a hot air balloon wide’ and ‘Could you be our Proms King or Proms Queen 2011’ being just two examples.

My favourite was  a regular ‘win £100’ and ‘win £50’ worth of petrol if your car is spotted displaying the paper’s ‘Black White Read all over Newbury News’ stickers.

This is a classic but catchy example of quality newspaper marketing that many papers have forgotten they should be constantly pushing.
 

6 comments

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  • August 11, 2011 at 11:00 am
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    In the age of wrap-arounds, conglomerated freesheets and satellite subbing ‘hubs’, a healthy weekly like this is a breath of fresh air.

    Circulation is at 19,448, down 4.7 per cent, which is reasonable in context.

    Sadly it’s a dying breed.

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  • August 11, 2011 at 1:27 pm
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    I much prefer local radio station Newbury Sound, since they launched two years ago, we have had much more positive news reporting in West Berkshire.

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  • August 11, 2011 at 1:39 pm
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    Newbury Sound? Jolly news all day! They’d ignore riots if they happened in Berkshire!

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  • August 11, 2011 at 1:56 pm
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    Hands up which “Newbury Sound” ‘reporter’ wrote that.

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  • August 23, 2011 at 9:51 am
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    Delighted to see the Newbury Weekly News in the spotlight in your column. I worked at the paper for 12 years in the 60s-70s and was editor for three years. It was in my time there that the switch from hot metal/Cossar printing to computer set and paste up for web offset printing took place and Brien was one of those who learned their craft on the paper when I was chief reporter.
     
    It is good to see a paper led by journalists instead of accountants.
     
    Another good example is the paper I moved to — the family-owned Henley Standard, where my proud boast was of increasing the circulation every consecutive six months for 10 years. Like the NWN it has lost a few readers in recent years, but is still a paper with a strong independent future, not living in the past, but embracing new technology of the web and video (not sure I’m convinced of the value of that). Again, I was involved in the conversion from hot metal (monotype!) and flatbed printing, to offset printing. When the paper outgrew the perfecting Rotaprint and the custom-built collator, I set up my own printing firm, installing a two-unit web offset press in a shed some miles away so my boss was also my customer. Many were the nights my family and I would slave into the early hours on the press and insetting machine which had come from the Belfast Telegraph. The newspaper is now printed at Newbury along with the equally independent Maidenhead Advertiser.
     
    After packing in journalism to do aid work, I’m back in harness writing a fortnightly colour news magazine on the glorious island of Alderney, and still working by the principle that if something happens before the last page has been printed we do all we can to report it. Largely printed on full-colour copiers, it could be the model for local paid-for newspapers for communities up to small towns where all you need are a good journalist and someone to sell adverts

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