Newsagents on the Isle of Wight say they are feeling the impact of continued disruption to newspaper deliveries locally.
It is reported that there has been severe disruption to the delivery of newspapers to shops by Menzies Distribution over the past 6 weeks or so.
As a result, some shops are losing up to £100 a day with the papers arriving up to 6 hours late.
Menzies says that in recent weeks there have been a number of ‘one-off’ incidents that have caused delays. Some of the disruption is being blamed on changes to Wightlink’s ferry timetable.
It all comes at a time when newspaper readership is in serious decline, with the latest figures showing that even the nationals are now seeing a year-on-year decline as digital news becomes dominant.
It was back in July that Island Echo reported that staff at Menzies’ depot in Ryde were at risk of redundancy.
Yesterday’s news….tomorrow!
It’s only a hub now, won’t be long before it’s gone altogether
If we may add to these comments for accuracy. This doesn’t apply to the IW Observer, which (at 18,000 printed copies every week and more than 4,500 digital copies sent out free to subscribers) is the most popular local newspaper on the Island. Our own staff do most distribution, although some larger supermarkets are subject to national agreements and those newspapers are delivered reliably by a local contractor. Also, our readership is not in decline – whilst some people do choose to read news online, others still like to read a physical newspaper. Thankfully, there are truly local companies providing Islanders with both options. Thanks.