Compliments

The ‘Star’ team were flattered recently when contacted by a Swedish visitor who owns a stable of six small country newspapers. Bertil Pettersson and his partner Eva-Marie were spending 2 weeks driving a campervan around the North Island and were so impressed by our little paper that they met with David Kershaw to discuss the vagaries and future of these publications.
Their rural newspapers, which have a circulation of between 1800 and 3400 subscribers per paper,* started in 1927 when a demand was recognised to provide weekly information specifically to farmers.

Six times a year the company prints a free publication that has a rural distribution of 35,000. Income is generated not only from advertising and subscriptions but also from a government subsidy which is applied for every year. 
There were compliments about The Star and ideas were exchanged. Bertil also told how the advent of ‘digital news’ is causing turbulent times in the Swedish newspaper industry. Some major newspapers have cut production from seven days a week to three and are considering making their publications free.
In spite of predictions that there will be no newspapers at all in 4-6 years, Bertil and Eva-Marie are confident this won’t be the case with small papers containing local news. In the past eight years, The Martinborough Star has gone from strength to strength, which must be a good sign.
Photo caption : Bertil Pettersson and his partner Eva-Marie