A 152-year-old local newspaper in Kent has increased its readership ten times over after its experiment with a part-free distribution model.

The Gravesend Reporter, part of Archant’s Kentish Times series of weeklies, is to give away 60,000 copies in and around the town as part of a wider plan to integrate the paper with its free sister title The Gravesend and District Express. The Reporter sold about 6,000 before the change and will remain on sale in ‘key retailers’but at the lower price of 25p, down from its normal 40p cover-price.

John Hooker, Kentish Times series publishing director said the move would put the Reporter into 20,000 more homes a week. The paper has also had a re-design and its staff will move to a new office in the centre of Gravesend.