I think this announcement means that the Crawley News is to become part of the Mail group of papers.
Its safe to say that the Mail and its associated titles are not my favourites, but this change of ownership is not necessarily such a bad thing. Most importantly, it makes it more likely that we will continue to have two local papers in town. For a while it looked like the Johnson Press were interested in buying up some of the Trinity Mirror titles, and if they had done that it was likely they would have merged the News with the Observer.
The other positive aspect of this is that the owners of the News have been neglecting it for a long time, and new owners might decide to put some resources into their papers. They might even do something about the News’ terrible website. Of course, they could also decide to close a few down: anything is possible.
The downside is the likelihood of a right-wing bias in the new owners, but we have never felt the News’ proprietors to be particularly friendly to us anyway.
The main thing is that they are not the same as the owners of the Observer, and so there will be some competition.
Maybe Crawley News will go daily – and be re-named “Gatwick City News” 😉
Then again, maybe not.
Yeah, Owen, I think you might be right on this one…which makes a change 😉