An independent weekly has bought its own high street office after outgrowing its original home.
The Driffield & Wolds Weekly has purchased a new headquarters on Middle Street South, in the centre of Driffield.
The newspaper had been in rented premises in the Yorkshire town since it was founded by Andy Stabler, after he took voluntary redundancy from the now-defunct Driffield Times & Post in 2015.
Andy says he is still seeing sales increase as the paper closes in on four years of publishing, with sales up again year-on-year.
The new office, pictured, was formerly owned by Horsley & Dawson, a printers of 100 years.
Said Andy: “In this day and age, as many newspapers leave the high street, it’s a very proud moment for us to go against the tide.
“And as newspapers across the country see their sales decline year-on-year, again we go against the tide, as only last week we sold more copies than the corresponding week last year.
“You hear people say they read their news online, but where we are successful with the Driffield & Wolds Weekly is that over 95 per cent of our content you will only find in the paper and nowhere else. And it’s all local.
“The new sign is up above the office, which also includes the free monthly Beverley Life logo. We have been publishing Beverley’s only newspaper for well over a year.”
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Yet more evidence that print isn’t dead and that in the right hands it can actually be on the up. Well done all round. I wonder how many new local papers and local magazines have launched in recent years. Are more local titles being printed now than at the turn of the century? Anyone got any accurate data?
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Every town & city deserves a ‘Driffield & Wolds Weekly’ type publication and here is solid proof the local community will get behind it.I think we’ll see a lot more of this sort of launch as the corporate titles fade out of sight.
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Good to see a newspaper setting up home in the heart of a town, at a time when so many titles run by the likes of Newsquest and Reach are relocating to the middle of nowhere. Pleasing to see that Andy’s venture seems to be going well.
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The future of hyper local community news is in the hands of independent publishers such as this, the older groups have lost their markets whilst publications like this are springing up all over providing grass roots news the others are no longer capable or able to handle.
Good luck to those filling the gaps and providing a true community news service, you’re the future.
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Great news. We are finally getting some office space (yes, on our patch) and it would be brilliant to be able to follow in the footsteps of these guys.
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Good for them. Just shows that if you stay “local” you will generally reap results. It is when newspapers fall into the hands of the so-called “big boys” with expensive HQs and directors to sustain that they start to come a cropper. It is not just in the “provinces” though. Look at what has happened to some of the ex Fleet St big boys with mergers and tie ups that mean they are not as strong as they used to be.
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