Newspaper entrepreneur Sir Ray Tindle is to launch seven new hyperlocal titles in South London next week alongside its 147-year-old flagship the South London Press.
The new paid-for weeklies – dubbed the ‘Magnificent Seven’ by Tindle bosses – are being launched in Streatham, Brixton, Wimbledon, Wandsworth, Dulwich, Deptford & New Cross and Forest Hill & Sydenham and will hit the streets on Friday, 8 June.
The publisher has chosen the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee week to launch the titles and is promising “pages and pages” of pictures of people taken street parties across South London.
However asked whether any additional journalists were being taken on as a result of the launch, SLP managing director Peter Edwards, who is overseeing the project, would say only that the matter was being kept under review.
The new titles, which be priced at 50p, will between them cover the same patch as the existing South London Press but with a much more hyperlocal flavour.
The SLP will continue as a standalone title but will only circulate in areas of the patch not covered by the seven new titles.
Sir Ray said: “Those who say the local press is finished are wrong. This group owns many community newspapers around the country which are doing well in both circulation and advertising terms.”
“The South London Press editor, Hannah Walker, and staff have rallied wholeheartedly behind the hyperlocal launches and have been magnificent. Managing director Peter Edwards is leading the operation from Streatham. He is confident of its total success.”
Added Hannah: “These are challenging times for all newspapers and in the fast-changing world of journalism we need to let South Londoners know that we are there for them.
“We are a trustworthy, reliable and solid source of information. Local news is as important as ever and we are determined to rise to the formidable challenge and champion our readers and our newspapers.”
Earlier this year the SLP invited journalists to apply for a voluntary redundancy programme which eventually saw five of its 20-strong editorial team leaving the staff.
They included the deputy editor, the news editor, the chief reporter and two reporters.
Sign up for our free daily email bulletin
Follow HTFP on Twitter
Got a story? Email the Editor at
Seven new titles and not one new job? Mmmm… just work harder everybody! That’s the spirit!
Report this comment
Sinking ship!
You watch it all unravel over the next 12 months!
This is called desperation
Report this comment
South London Press lost 500k last year. This is the last desperate move in what will prove to be its last few months of circulation.
Report this comment
Sir Ray appears to have played a blinding hospital pass to Peter Edwards!
Report this comment
I’m not that it’s right to say that seven newspapers are being launched. Someone has told me that the SLP has been producing a Brixton edition for a while. This morning I’ve just seen a scan of a masthead reading “Brixton South London Press”, and this is dated Friday December 17, 2010.
At the moment, it seems that the Brixton edition only appears on Friday, with the midweek (Tuesday) paper presumably appearing in its traditional single edition.
Strange to see that the launches include a Wimbledon edition – that’s not really SLP country. Is this a sign that the Lambeth Post and the Mitcham and Wimbledon free papers are finally about to be put out of their misery? Often there’s almost no difference in the (minimal) content of the two free titles. See e-editions of the Posts online here:
http://www.southlondonpress.co.uk/
Report this comment
Since Steve Dyson reviewed the South London Press,
http://htfpnew.adaptive.co.uk/2012/news/dyson-at-large-shortage-of-news-in-tindle-weekly/ , and commented that, with only 33 non-sport news items, it was the paid-for paper with the fewest stories he had seen, perhaps it’s time for an update.
The Friday 1 June issue of 48 pages was down to 20 non-sport stories and a two-page spread on the jubilee. If the paper’s covering the five boroughs mentioned in the article, that’s barely one story per 50,000 people. Not much room for lots of names and faces there.
Even when the paper moves to eight editions, without a re-design to increase the story count, even if it changed all the stories between editions (which isn’t likely) it still won’t amount to very wide coverage of each area.
Report this comment
Not quite a launch of new titles, the ‘magnificent seven’ will have different new stories on the first seven to eight pages but the rest of the newspaper will be uniform in all editions. Expect these change news stories to dwindle over time as the editorial department struggle to cope with less staff than before.
No doubt we will be told after the first two weeks these editions have been a roaring success and profits have gone through the roof but lets see if results are the same in six months time.
Tindle launched three new 16 page Herald titles from their Enfield office back in September 2010 that was supposed to ‘launch them out of the recession.’ Where are these titles now?
With losses of over 500k a year surely the SLP Managing Director should be held accountable? In any other business sector such horrendous losses would see heads roll.
Word of advice: watch out for that iceberg ahead!!
Report this comment
Just got my ‘new’ newspaper and Tindle has been a bit duplicitous with the use of the word new.
It’s just a slip edition of the main SLP with the first seven showing Jubilee pics from the relevant locality.
All very good in a week where seven pages of tailored local content can be reproduced fairly easily but I await next weeks’ offering to see if each of the seven will contain seven pages of hyperlocal content again.
I suspect not given that SLP’s newsroom has been cut significantly and producing an extra 49 pages of suitable copy may prove too much.
Report this comment
As expected this week’s hyperlocal offerings are just three slip pages with a weak press relaese splash for the fronts.
One of the papers only managed a picture front with a turn to a story in the main edition.
They are cunningly using a strap on the front page to point to stories with a hyperlocal flavour further into the main paper as well.
Next week I predict fronts only.
Hardly new products.
Report this comment