Newspaper Club

I experienced one of my biggest thrills whilst working at Newspaper Club (and there have been so very many) one evening earlier this year. We were celebrating the arrival of a shiny new digital press at one of our printing partners. Very thoughtfully, our printer friend had laid out on a big table all the papers they’d run off for Newspaper Club’s customers in the previous few weeks.

I knew we were constantly being given some great stuff to print but I was really unprepared for how good they all looked. Many were quite beautiful. Others clever and witty. Even the ones that had a bit of an amateur look about them looked amateur in a genuine and charming way. Brilliant.

Well, I’ve just experienced another thrill like that one. We now have an online, and constantly replenished, version of that printer’s big table on the site: our Newsagent. People share their newspapers there by simply selecting an option on the Dashboard when they’re ready. It’s only been up for a couple of weeks but there’s already a good selection.

To pick out a few from our currently featured papers (though I could have chosen literally dozens of interesting ones from those shared): this splendid wedding anniversary one by Phil Dobinson, which has surely earned him a wheelbarrow of marital brownie points and whose front page is at the top of this post (incidentally, they also made a similarly splendid wedding paper); this intriguing one by the Ferment ‘zine people, which happens to be about one of my favourite subjects, food (you can sign up to buy it here); this one by the photography collective wideyed featuring a residency in a French chateau and lots of wine-making (wine being another favourite thing); and this one made by Ingi, who is, you know, one of those Icelandic-Belgian-Geordie comic creators (it will be for sale at the Canny Comic Con on 10th December). I could go on – but why not pop over to the Newsagent and take a look yourself?

The word “newspaper” really doesn’t do it all justice, does it?

One of the world’s most prolific bloggers, US-based Andrew Sullivan, rediscovers the newspaper:

…I’ve switched from reading the NYT on my iPad to reading it on paper. It feels like a huge improvement. It isn’t that the iPad didn’t give me all the information I wanted – at any time. It’s just that when I have the actual paper in my hands, I find myself reading more – and more closely. I have a sense of accomplishment as I toss each ransacked section onto the floor next to my blogging chair. The photographs pop. The placement of the stories visually adds a layer of editorial spin that informs me about where the paper is coming from. I didn’t quite expect this. I liked my iPad mornings with coffee and gluten-free cookies. But suddenly, a newspaper is fresh.

We know exactly what he means. As do more and more people from far and wide – last week we delivered nearly half our papers overseas, mostly to Europe but also to customers in Australia and North America. We would like to send more to the US, and we’re sure we can.

So thanks for the reminder of what newsprint can do, Mr Sullivan.