Type Weekly newspaper Editor Alan Marriott | Format Tabloid Founded 1884 | |
Publisher Isle of Wight County Press Group Ltd Headquarters Brannon House, 123 Pyle Street, Newport, Isle of Wight, UK PO30 1ST | ||
The Isle of Wight County Press is a local, compact newspaper published every Friday on the Isle of Wight. It has an audited circulation of 25,827 copies, compared to a local population of 140,500. The paper has seen a drop in circulation of 11,199 between June 2009 and June 2016 (30.25%). The paper has been owned locally since its foundation.
The Isle of Wight County Press website was launched in 1999 and features headline articles updated on a daily basis. These will often appear on the website before featuring in the next issue, allowing readers to be updated daily instead of each week. The website also features videos and photo galleries that would not normally be available in a standard issue. During June 2009 the website passed 1 million views for the first time, attracting a record figure of 1,001,705 coupled with another record of 71,068 unique visitors. The increase in visitor numbers was said to have been boosted by interest in the Isle of Wight Council election results and Isle of Wight Festival coverage. The Isle of Wight County Press passed its 3 million online viewers in January 2013.
The first compact issue was released on 3 October 2008. Prior to this the paper had always been published in a broadsheet format. The change was made in a response to surveys carried out by the paper in November 2007 claiming 87 percent of islanders in favour of a compact format. Following the first release of the first compact issue, many islanders found the smaller size unsuitable for use on some jobs such as bee keeping.