Quizzes & Puzzles1 min ago
Newspaper distribution
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?
Answers
No best answer has yet been selected by Beswad. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.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.
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.
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.