Newspaper distribution

[Beswad]

How is every national paper gets distributed every day? Do they fax/email the whole paper to independant printers in every town?

How was it done 60 years ago?

[Pinotage]

They're distributed very much they way they've always been, nowadays primarily by lorry. 60 years ago more use of trains would have been made.

 

The further away from London the earlier the edition of the newspaper. If you'r in London you can buy the next days newspapers from about 10pm onwards; they're the editions that were printed first because they're travelling furthest.

[archbishop]

Nowadays a few national newspapers use regional printers. With the use of computers this makes the transfer easier.

[Beswad]

I thought about distribution by lorries but isn't a mamouth task getting the papers delivered to every Newsagent in the country? I mean the logistic of it all would be a nightmare plus it would be an inefficient use of resources i.e fuel costs.

 

 

[Pinotage]

Yes, it is a mammoth task, but how else do you think they get to your local newspaper shop?

 

Newspapers are delivered to wholesalers who then bundle up the consignments for the shops they serve and deliver them during the night and early morning so they're piled up by the front door when the newspaper shop opens in the morning.

Evening newpapers are delivered during the afternoon - keep a lookout and you'll see the vans dropping off new editions at street sellers and shops.

 

[LeMarchand]

Just to confirm Pinotage's post - they go from the printers (be it in London or a regional printer) to a reasonably local wholesaler, who then delivers to each outlet on their books. This means that one van will be carrying all the papers (Mail, Sun, Times etc) and magazines for all the supplied outlets, so it's not terribly inefficient.

[THFCUK]

my dad is a manager at the Daily Mail news papers in London, they print about 4 editions of the paper per night, they start printing at about 8pm and stop about 6am (then they start to print the evening standard).  what happens is the offices in kensington they type all the information in the paper and then email it over to the docklands (where the printing presses are) which then plates are made and the plates get put on the presses there are 10 presses within the daily mail printers and they roll of about 60,000 copies an hour (alot of papers lol) they used to till the mid 80's use the railways but now use loads of lorries like pinotage said, the london printers of the daily mail HQP only deliver all of london,  south of england and south wales and which has said before the further out the paper goes the earlier edition you get.

[BenDToy]

With a slight qualification, most are pretty accurate. All newspapers are now printed regionally, by both sister printers, and by contract printers. The electronic pages are transmitted around the country simultaneously, and the "plates" produced at the print site. The papers are then printed and distributed to the local regions.

[Peter Pedant]

Yeah the D T gets sent over a microwave link to Manchester where some gets printed and distirbuted. Northern and London editions can differ slightly