Local paper never ‘ton-tied’

CONGRATULATIONS and ‘Happy Birthday’ to the Local News for Southsiders – the free monthly newspaper is celebrating its 100th issue next month.

Serving Glasgow’s Southside communities including Gorbals, Govan, Pollok and Castlemilk, the paper’s 100th edition will be available from the tenth of next month. A competition and a new website will be launched to mark the happy event.

While other community papers have folded around it, the Local News has managed to secure a readership of over 32,000, with many picking up the paper in local shops and community centres.

For a publication with no public funding, a mixture of grim determination and good advertising revenue has been a recipe for this success.

But it is also the newspaper’s content and format which editor, Grace Franklin, believes is key to its survival.