Bartercard backs a new look 'Weekly Sport' tabloid!
Creating a proper sports focused red top, providing real sports news rather than soft porn or that familiar 'loony tune' editorial, the Weekly Sport has attracted some leading UK advertisers through its membership of Bartercard.
Weekly Sport is now owned and published in the UK and Eire by Independent News Ltd. and has recently won a significant advertising revenue agreement through their media company's longterm membership of Bartercard.
Bartercard is a trading exchange that allows businesses to link up with each other and swap services and goods in exchange for trade pounds. These can then be used to save cash.
"This is just what an exciting title like the Weekly Sport needs," says Bartercard's regional rep Scott Clancy. "The direct injection of our mainstream advertisers will kick start this sporty title straight into the game running..." During a recession, with advertising hard to secure, Bartercard may just be the winning formula that gives the Weekly Sport a competitive edge.
The title was launched by a team of journalists keen to create a tabloid suitable for all the family.
As such, the Weekly Sport aims to provide genuine sports news coverage throughout the Olympic year and to offer our readers intelligent editorial commentary on current news.
"We aim to bring positive and beneficial news to all our readers and profits to our all advertisers," says publisher Duncan Williams. "Already we have thousands of readers signed up to our digital Weekly Sport bulletins which are accessed during live matches and contain valid sporting commentary from some of the very best journalists working in the UK." Advertisers certainly do seem reassured by the stats.
Reading your news on an iPhone or iPad is certainly nothing new, but ousting porn advertising in favour of attracting leading brand advertisers, keen to be associated with a title that is paving the way for digital journalism, is a revolutionary move for the tabloid media.
"From a moral perspective too," insists Duncan Williams. "The move away from negative press, lies and soft selling pornography, is both ethical and a very wise evolutionary move forward following a wave of public scandal within the industry." "Frankly, the red top must either evolve or die. And by this I mean both technically and content wise. I believe I have the team and resources to do this."
Williams is certainly no stranger to a challenge and boasts a 20 year career in the newspaper industry. His passion for media is evidenced during the many detailed lectures he has given on the subject of British media.
He certainly won no friends within the American based Rupert Murdoch camp when he was one of the first to assert that British media ought to be owned by the British. He has been vocal in objecting to News Corp's stranglehold on the British media industry for decades and was vehemently opposed to James Murdoch's bid for BSkyB.
Only a growing readership and advertising will finally tell if the Weekly Sport will gain a foothold in the cut and thrust world of the tabloid. Bartercard will certainly help.
And those subscription figures already seem very favourable.
It is hoped that this will continue to expand as a long term positive media project, and help to restore the lost integrity of the red top and its central part in our popular British culture. 
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