Business & Work

Would you like to publish a newspaper?

By James Sharman

Have you ever wanted to write for a newspaper? Or even edit one? The newspaper industry has changed dramatically over the last 5 years and the opportunity for individuals to set up their own newspapers has never been greater

Due to technological advances both in publishing software and in the printing sector, it is now a realistic prospect for an individual acting on their own to publish a newspaper. Changes in the newspaper market have also meant that it there is plenty of ‘space’ in some areas of the country for new publications.

Why? Well, in the early part of this decade the big newspaper groups went on a buying spree and bought hundreds of independent regional newspapers across the country. If you were to purchase a copy of a local newspaper today it is a near certainty that it will have been published by one of the four large corporate newsgroups:

Is there a gap in the market near you?

Having bought out all the local competition in any given area, the big four then sought to cut costs by pruning their distribution networks. As a result, smaller towns and villages often no longer receive any local newspaper at all. This has presented an opportunity for private publishers to come into the market with small-circulation papers offering advertising to local shops and businesses.

This change in the marketplace has gone hand in hand with changes in newspaper production. Prior to the invention of ‘Computer-to-Plate’ technology, printers had to go through the lengthy process of exposing pictures and text onto film, processing the negatives and using those negatives to expose images onto photosensitive plates for insertion into the press. All this was highly labour intensive and therefore very expensive.

With CTP technology, electronic files on a computer can be exposed directly onto photosensitive plates. Labour and material costs have thus been dramatically reduced. The result is that newspaper printing is now well within the financial reach of the private individual.

Creative Technology

All the potential publisher has to do is create their pages on a home computer and email their files to the printing company as PDF (Portable Document Format) files. The use of PDFs allows different programmes to work on the same files. As a result, pages can be designed on anything from the basic Microsoft Publisher package, which comes ready-installed on many machines, to the current industry-standard programme, InDesign.

For someone interested in having a project which will be both a challenge and a potential money-maker, newspaper publishing is seriously worth considering. As a printing company whose customers include a number of private individuals who have successfully established local and ultra-local papers in their area, we have seen what is possible.

For More Information

If you are interested in the potential that newspaper publishing has to offer please contact us. We will be very happy to answer any questions you have and help you decide if publishing might be for you.