RIVALING local newspapers

Newspapers

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Distribution of free newspapers

Me and Georgina are looking at how free newspapers are distributed to their customers. I used to work as a paper boy so I have first-hand experience of one of the ways in which free newspapers are distributed.
First I am going to look at how newspapers use paper boys to distribute their newspapers

Newspaper institutions

Me and Georgina are looking at the companies who own and operate the free, local newspapers we are looking at. We are particularly looking at the News Shopper and Bromley Times, asa they are both free and deal with the local information around our area.
From our research we have found that the News Shopper are owned by a UK branch of the American company Gannett. The UK branch is called Newsquest. They run 17 daily paid-for titles, more than 200 weekly newspapers, magazines and trade publications and a network of award winning web sites.



Gannett is the owner of Newsquest and operate in America. Gannett Co., Inc. is a leading international news and information company. In the United States, the company publishes 84 daily newspapers, including USA TODAY, and nearly 850 non-daily publications. Along with each of its daily newspapers, the company operates Internet sites offering news and advertising that is customized for the market served and integrated with its publishing operations. USA TODAY.com is one of the most popular news sites on the Web. The company is the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S.



We also looked at The Bromley Times as they are the most local newspaper to us. We found out that they are owned by Archant who are the UK's largest independently owned regional media business.



So as we can see both newspapers are local and free and deal with issues in our area but the big difference is the fact that The Newshopper is owned by Newsquest who are a subsidiary of a American company, Gannett. So whilst the paper deals with local issues its owned by a not so local company. This is different to The Bromley Times who are owned by Archant who are a UK based company. Now I believe that this is a much better way of running the company as they know what the British people want, like and are interested in because they are based in the country that they are reporting on where as the Newsshopper is run by an American company who will have a very different view of Britain than those living in Britain.

Researching local free newspapers

This is the front page for the New Shopper, a free local Newspaper around Bromley. The conventions of a free local newspaper can be observed here such as the title of the newspaper is at the top of the page in bold lettering. There is then a big, shocking headline that catches the readers attention and gets them to want to read more, the words are aimed to scare you and the sentence doesn't really make a great sentence but you get all the information you need in 4 short words There is then a picture on the page that is unrelated to the main headline and is again a picture aimed to draw the audience in. In this case it is a picture of a family with a small child and your immediate reaction is to think the shocking headline is related to the small child.

There are adverts on the front page right under the title of the newspaper and this shows how the newspaper company are paying for the costs of running a newspaper, via advertising. The fact that there are alot of adverts of the front page (there are some more on the right hand side) shows that it is expensive to run a newspaper and they have to rent out a lot of space on their main pages to keep up the costs.

The main story starts on the front page but continues inside and finishes the story and this is again to make the reader want to read the paper and inevitably see some more adverts on the inside.