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August 5, 2004updated 22 Nov 2022 11:53am

Green Lanes Express clocks up first six months and prepares to expand

By Press Gazette

An independent free weekly newspaper distributed along one of London’s longest roads has passed the sixmonth barrier.

The owners of the Green Lanes Express say the paper is in good shape financially and looking to expand.

It has a distribution of 35,000 and goes out along the eight-mile length of Green Lanes through a combination of newsagent pick-up points and home delivery.

Green Lanes starts on the edge of Islington and runs north through the boroughs of Hackney and Haringey to the edge of Enfield.

The paper was launched by editor Derya Filiz with backing from Ercan Vuranlar, who established London Turkish newspaper Olay until he sold it two years ago.

Filiz, 28, has three and a half years’ experience in journalism and has worked on The Observer, The Independent and the Evening Standard.

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She said: “We were looking at local newspapers and found that they were very staid in design and what they were reporting.”

She said she saw a gap in the market for a paper that cut across traditional London borough boundaries. Big advertisers already investing in the paper include the London boroughs of Enfield and Haringey, bus company Arriva and the NHS.

The Green Lanes Express has two full-time editorial staff, two full-time sales people and a designer.

Filiz said: “We’ve had some fantastic stories. There’s so much going on in this part of London. Princess Anne visited a community hall in May and we were the only local newspaper there.

On the same day we had Princess Anne on the front, one other local paper had a picture of some ducks.”

Filiz said her paper intended to “unite all the people of Green Lanes, regardless of age, colour, ethnicity, religion and social class”.

By Dominic Ponsford

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

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