Independently
owned weekly Your Leek Paper marked its 100th issue this week after
breaking through the 5,000 circulation barrier for the first time.
The
Staffordshire-based title was set up by editor Gary Shenton and other
former Leek Post & Times employees using redundancy cheques.
Two years on he claims the paper is turning a profit and now employs 20 people, three of which are journalists.
Over
the past two years the wellestablished Leek Post & Times has kept
circulation more or less stable at 11,412, proving that a small market
town can support two paid-for weekly papers.
Shenton said the paper averages between 48 and 56 pages and the website often has 8,000 hits a day.
He
said: “We started this with thousands not millions and it just goes to
show what you can achieve if you work hard. We don’t make a lot of
money but we certainly make a profit and we enjoy what we are doing.
“We’ve proved the people wrong who said we were only going to last six weeks.”
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