The team behind a new local community newspaper say they have been “overwhelmed” by the response to the first edition.
The Lichfield and Burntwood Independent rolled off the presses for the first time last week and has been available at community collection points.
Produced by the team behind Lichfield Live, the fortnightly newspaper is being piloted across an initial four editions.
Editor Ross Hawkes said:
“We’ve always been told Lichfield and Burntwood needed a newspaper, but we still weren’t sure whether that would be the reality when the first papers were taken out to different locations.
“But the response has been fantastic and has far exceeded our initial hopes with many locations seeing their supply of newspapers picked up in double quick time.
“Our small team of volunteers has now distributed all of our 5,000 copies to the different locations and we’re so grateful to all of the collection points who have allowed people to pick up a paper from their premises.
“Some have asked whether more places can stock it in future, but at this stage we’re still in a pilot phase so we now want to monitor the remaining four editions in the trial in order to make a decision on what the future of The Lichfield and Burntwood Independent might look like in the longer term.
“Those discussions will include things such as how we might be able to get more copies into more locations.
“But in the meantime I would urge everyone to ‘pass on the paper’ to a neighbour, friend or family member when they’ve read it so more people can see what The Lichfield and Burntwood Independent offers.”
Ross Hawkes
The next edition of the newspaper is due to be published on 21st March, with preparations already well underway.
But despite the initial success, Ross added that the long term future of The Lichfield and Burntwood Independent would still depend on a range of factors.
“As someone with my professional roots in local journalism I’m a huge believer in the value of newspapers and news more generally to communities – but we have to recognise that we need to make sure that a newspaper can support itself going forward.
“As a community interest company run entirely by volunteers, we need to ensure that we have enough advertisers and members to be able to make The Lichfield and Burntwood Independent a viable publication in the long term and cover the considerable costs associated with a printed newspaper.
“We’re hugely grateful for the support we’ve already received, but we know that in order to carry on publishing beyond the trial and to grow the number of copies we can distribute we need to find more advertisers and members to support out work.
“So the message is very much that if a locally-produced, locally-focused newspaper is something you would like to see in the long term, please do support us during this pilot so we can understand whether continuing with print will be viable in the coming weeks.”
Ross Hawkes
Anyone interested in finding out more about advertising with Lichfield Live and The Lichfield and Burntwood Independent can email yournews@lichfieldlive.co.uk.
