The first issue of Blog Preston, in print, and it coming off the press at the printers

This week marks a special moment for Blog Preston as we unveil a partnership we’ve been working on – to put what we do into print.

It’s a long way since we began on a cold January afternoon one Sunday in 2009, as we now reach 30,000 people in Preston every week through our website and app.

But we wanted to take a next step and a collaboration with local charity Creativity Works Preston has allowed us to give you a free weekly newspaper delivered to 20,000 homes in the city and available from key points in the city centre.

It’s baby steps to begin with but we hope you’ll enjoy having a flick through a week in Preston and by partnering with Creativity Works we’re also able to give young people the chance to get excited and learn about media production.

Working with experienced newspaper designers Murray Walker and Tristan Freeman it means we can squeeze the best of what we do onto the Blog into print each week.

We’re a Community Interest Company and our main aim is to ensure the city of Preston is kept up to date – and although we reach a lot of people each day on the site we felt this would be a good way of promoting the site but also reaching people that we haven’t yet.

Being able to then help youngsters learn new skills and find paid work alongside this meets even more of our aims as a community company.

The paper is not being delivered to all households in Preston, but will be available at key places around the city centre and you can also pick up a copy from the Creativity Works office in 33 Shepherd Street (PR1 3UE) between 8.30am-4pm on weekdays and 10am-2pm on Saturdays. They are available at reception.

We hope you enjoy the paper, you can see it whizzing off the presses in the video below, and if you’d like to be part of it you can send your stories as always to contactus@blogpreston.co.uk and also get in touch if you would like to advertise in the paper.

The advertising in the paper helps ensure it is free, we can reinvest in community reporting and helps support a Preston charity as well in Creativity Works Preston.

Thank you to everyone for your support over the years, and we’ll continue striving to bring you the latest and best Preston news.

From Ed & Luke, and all the Blog Preston team