whatsinKenilworth's made The Guardian Greenslade Blog...again

The last two posts about about the local weekly newspapers have been picked up by Roy Greenslade at The Guardian, his words:


Three titles, same contents, common practice

A blogger has been studying the contents of three apparently separate local newspaper titles and found that they are virtually the same once you open them up.

Aside from the differing front pages of the Kenilworth Weekly News, the Leamington Spa Courier and the Warwick Courier, there are very few unique pages inside.

By the calculations of the blogger, WhatsinKenilworth, they share almost of all their 76 pages, which he/she thinks is "pretty poor", and asks whether the publisher, Johnston Press, is trying to pull a fast one.

I shouldn't think so. It's all about reduced resources, and it has been fairly common practice for many weeklies with "sister publications" for some time.

For the record, the Kenilworth paper sold an average of just 3,120 copies in the final six months of last year (down 11.7% on the same period the previous year). The Leamington Courier's 11,012 sale was down 9.5%.

And the Warwick Courier? It is not separately listed in the ABC statistics.