Shropshire Star Analysis + History

The Shropshire Star is a regional newspaper, which mainly covers the whole of Shropshire, but it also covers parts of Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Cheshire, the Llangollen area and northern Powys in the UK. The paper is published 6 days a week, and is usually available from midday. The paper had been 40p for a while, and it has now gone up to 42p. The paper is sold in newsagents, off licenses, high end supermarkets and garages. There used to be 8 editions of the paper, these being County, South, North, West and East. Where as now I have only found a County one. The paper is very good value for money, as you get around 44-70 pages (depending on if there is a special article inside) and there are usually 9 stories on the front page. With around 17 stories per page inside. There is varied content so the paper appeals to its target audience. The paper also delivers to your home for around £10 per month, giving you 6 papers a week. The paper tends to have supplements inside, with different sections for housing, advertising, weddings and cars. The most frequent supplement within in the paper is the classified job section that comes out every Thursday.

The Star is owned by the Midland News Association, an independent media business with offices in Wolverhampton and Telford. MNA publishes 22 newspapers, including local papers such as the Market Drayton Advertiser, the Shrewsbury Chronicle and the Express + Star. The Midland News Association also owns 2 radio stations, The Severn and The Wyre, these were then sold in 2011. It is the 9th leading publisher in the country, and has sub-sections of Express + Star Ltd. and Shropshire Newspapers Ltd. The Midland News Association owns these papers, but they are published by higher end publishers. This means that they own the same house style and all the images used in the papers, this is why we see the same image in different newspapers. The Midland News Association has a circulation of over 1.5million


The Shropshire Star was the first post war evening newspaper, with its first edition being released on the 5th October 1964. The Shropshire Star was at the forefront of new technology, as it had better picture and printing quality. Newspapers used to use hot metal typesetting, which consisted of each letter being placed into a mould and then printed out, old Fleet Street newspapers still used this method. This way of printing was very slow and expensive. And because the Star was the first newspaper after the war, it had the chance to start off printing differently. It used a method called photo composition and web offset (and this is something that newspapers still use now). Offset printing is where the inked image and text would be printed onto a roller, and then this would be transferred onto the paper. This is what all newspapers use now, as it is a lot quicker than the old method.

 The total circulation for the Shropshire Star for January 2012, was 55491. The total readership was 139927 adults, 82% of these readers have their papers home delivered. With 71370 being Men and 68558 being Women. The majority of readers that buy the papers are aged between 45 and 54. Also C2DE readers, buy the paper more than ABC1, showing that working class people read it more than the upper class. The paper saw more of a surge in circulation after the old Shropshire edition of the Express + Star, which was originally sold before the Shropshire Star came along. The Shropshire Express + Star only got around a 19,000 nightly circulation whereas by the mid 1980s, the Shropshire Star was hitting of 100,000 readers a night. From this, the paper went from its original 3 editions to a further 6 more. In Shropshire, 39% of the adult population read the Shropshire Star, which is remarkable as The Sun only has 14%, coming in second. Out of 98,458 readers, 57% of them do not buy another paper to read. and 35% of these read it 6 nights a week. According to TNSmedia 2008, it takes an average of 33 minutes to read the Shropshire Star.

 The paper also has a website, where 182413 people visit it every month. In this case, AB readers are the most popular, with 64975 AB readers going onto the website. The largest age group for the paper is again 45-54 year olds. The Shropshire Star, was one of the first local newspapers to go online, with 'shropshire-online.com' in 1998. In 1999 the paper gained its first internet editor. Since 1988 the layout of the website has changed many times, and this is the most up to date layout (Feb 2012). The website itself pulls in nearly 1 million page views a month. The content on the website is very similar to the paper, although no all the stories are on there they are very difficult to find. The site could do with having better search engines, or a bigger capacity so it could hold a lot more articles on it, as you have to search for ages to try and find what your looking for. 71% of the adult population (Apr '10 - Mar '11) read regional newspapers, which has dropped by 13% in the last 5 years, suggesting that the digital newspapers and their websites have become a lot more popular.

Along with the website, the Shropshire Star now has a new app on iTunes, which allows you to read digital versions of the paper instead of having it delivered to you. At the moment they are also offering a buy the app, get a week free policy, so you can get access to the paper free for a week. The Shropshire Star also has it's own Twitter account, which means if you have Twitter on your phone, you can access the latest, breaking news on the go. This is also what other newspapers seem to have been doing, and it's a way of moving on with the digital age. Blogging, apps, video streaming and e-editions are the perfect way to attract a younger audience as they never would usually buy a newspaper.

The paper is in a Tabloid format, which it what newspapers are typically presented as. The print quality is generally very good, the clarity of images though could be a little bit better, but on a small budget, compared to the top newspapers, it's very good. The paper was also the first to used colour printing, 4 months after its first release. In March 1967, it was the first paper in the country to take a colour photograph, and print it the same day. This was the occasion when the Queen came to visit Shropshire. The front page of this edition saw the image of the Queen taking up around 2/3 of the page, and the masthead was also in full colour. The red masthead also went along with a small column of text which had a background of yellow. In the mid 1980s, the paper was also one of the first to computerise its articles, meaning that they would could out the middle man who would type set, and send it straight to the editor and then the printers, this is known as Single Keying.

The majority of the local news on the front page, is news that would be relevant to the whole County, rather than seperate news stories, this gives a high level of meaningfulness to the stories. They are from around all of the county, and with the paper I am analysing (Tuesday 21st February) there is 1 story that is nationwide news. The rest of the news are local stories, and things that would concern the county. Throughout the paper, the stories decrease in importance. A lot of the local news is about achievements within the county, especially to do with schools, and charity. In the back pages of the paper, there is a section for sport, which shows the achievements of schools, and sports teams in the county, and the back page shows main sports news from major events, or major sports matches between different teams. Photographs are used throughout the paper in some articles to promote certain stories, this could be a promotion for a theatre performance or a charity event. They are also used to identify people who have committed crimes or have been killed. They are mainly used to inform people of a story. There is enough national and international news to keep a high solus readership, as recently we have seen stories about the Oscars, and the Grammys.

Editionising was brought in to keep a more local focus on the news. There were 8 editions including, a North Shropshire, South Shropshire, Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Welsh Border, Bridgnorth and Last edition. Whereas in the past few months they have gone back down to a County edition which has a daily circulation of 7,628 readers, a Border edition which has a daily circulation of 7,685 readers and a South edition which has a daily circulation of 4,939 readers.

The lexis in this paper is formal, and easy to understand. They do use sophisticated words at times, but the majority of the paper is easy to read and informative. The mode of address within the paper is very friendly and direct. This suggests that the paper is aware of its target audience, who is a varied mixture of ABC1 and C2DE readers, this reflects on the paper well as it shows that it has a high standard for its readers.

Social groups are represented equally, and there is no differentiation between different social classes. The paper is written as if it were talking to young and old people, and all races. There are stories included in the paper that have more of an interest to elderly people, for example when they promote coffee mornings. It reflects the audience well because there is no divide in race, or social class. The Shropshire Star is known for sponsoring local events and getting involved with charities and schools. This reflects on the paper well it it gives them a strong bond with the community. It is very pro-community rather than being pro-political like many of the high end tabloid papers. It represents the community positively, which gives a good self image and encourages sales. The positive values represented are that they so caring (pro-environment, pro-people) they are very child centred, as they spend a lot of time trying to find out what is happening in local schools. They also cater to the elderly by having a 'Pictures from the Past,' section where anyone who has an image of a Shropshire town can send in what it used to look like. The paper also provides a service to the community by having a classifieds page, and supplements every week on jobs, cars, chemist opening times and competition offers. It also shows the voice of the reader by publishing letters and announcements from the public. 70.4% of ABC1 read local papers, and 71.1% of C2DE read local papers. Local papers have to fight harder for market share against the nationals, even though only 47% of people read national papers, (Jan '12) meaning that local and regional papers have a high solus readership. 26.7% of adults that read a Regional paper do not read a National daily. Local and Regional newspapers are considered the most trusted medium, as they don't end to make stories up, as they are mainly given by the local people. 60% of people will talk to their local newspaper rather than ringing up a national paper. 

In my edition of the Shropshire Star (21st February 2012) there are pages of classifieds, properties, competitions and puzzles, as well as a small section of stocks + shares and also adverts for you to hire agricultural items. The property and classified sections were the biggest of them all. The property section has many houses from different estate agents, which gives a great variety of location.

The Shropshire Star doesn't have a massive competitor, as it is the biggest newspaper in Shropshire. After the Star the next newspaper people read is national The Sun. The Star could be in competition with  local papers such as the Shrewsbury Chronicle and the Telford Journal, as these are in areas where the Star is popular, but the Chronicle and Journal are both at the front of the pack in those areas.