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Weekly marks music festival anniversary with pullout

A weekly newspaper has published a special edition marking the 20th anniversary of a music festival which takes place on its patch.

The Chelmsford Weekly News celebrated 20 years since the idea for V Festival was first dreamt up with an eight-page pullout in Thursday’s edition.

The festival, held annually at Chelmsford’s Hylands Park, as well as Weston Park, in Staffordshire, was initially thought up by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker in 1995.

Its inaugural incarnation took place the following year, with performers including Paul Weller, The Charlatans and Gary Numan also on the bill.

Acts to play this year’s festival, which took place last Saturday and Sunday, included Kasabian, Tom Jones and Olly Murs.

The Weekly News ran a special poster front, pictured below, as well as an eight-page pullout, to mark the event.

ChelmsfordV

It featured a main lead, first person piece from reporter Chloe Chapman, extended vox pop, pictures of acts performing and a three-page gallery of crowd pictures where readers were urged to spot themselves.

A poster front was also run on the paper’s sister title, the Brentwood Weekly News.

Gary Pearson, who edits both titles, said: “V is such a popular event which puts Chelmsford at the centre of the music world for one weekend a year.

“It felt right to mark the 20th anniversary with a pullout for our readers.”

4 comments

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  • September 2, 2015 at 5:05 pm
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    Well done the Weekly News – Festivals have taken the place of nightclubs and going out in the evening for most of the nations youth, and local papers that ignore them or take the Col. Herbert Gusset “aren’t they noisy and unpleasant” angle are missing a trick.
    Allowing young reporters the chance to be music journalists for the week is one of the perks of the job. Plus devoting eight pages of a freesheet to this sort of thing shows real engagement with the readers. A neat job, well executed.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 5:41 pm
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    The Weekly News didn’t have a V poster front at all.
    It splashed on GCSE results a week after they came out.

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  • September 3, 2015 at 10:54 am
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    Do many locals go to this festival, probably not, 4 pages would have been enough. Festival finished on Sunday, papers out on Thursday, old news

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