The Heartbeat of Newham

The Newham Recorder was formed back in 1968, three years after the old County Boroughs of East Ham and West Ham were brought together to form the London Borough of Newham. Prior to that , since the early 1900’s there had been the old East Ham Recorder, which was a slip edition of our sister paper , the Ilford Recorder.

 The paper quickly established itself as THE newspaper in the community and it acquired an unrivalled reputation for campaigning on behalf of its readers. Wherever important issues have arisen, the Recorder has been at the heart of the action.

And when we speak, people in authority do listen! The Recorder is committed to supporting its local community in every sense of the world. We place such an importance on developing a personal relationship with our readers. We have always had dedicated local editorial, backed by an unrivalled advertisement section and the best sports coverage – of which West Ham United is a major part.

The paper is well known for being the power behind local issue, the voice of the people and a paper of excellence. The Newham Recorder has had just two Editors in its history. The first, Tom Duncan, went on to become a Freeman of Newham, in recogntion of his work in the community. which also reflects enormous credit on the paper.

The second, Colin Grainger, who joined the paper as a trainee reporter back in 1972, became the paper’s second Editor 12 years ago. Newham is unique in London in terms of its people, history and opportunities. It benefits from being a diverse, multi-cultural environment. Newham is redefining itself as a viable and attractive business for hundreds of local companies.

The Recorder has changed – reflecting the changes in the community – over the last decade. With the growth of London City Airport, the ExCeL exhibition centre and the gradual creation of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, Newham is booming.

But at the same time there is still he social deprivation that ranks us the second most deprived area in the country.

We are very proud to be part of the community. We have won the national Community Newspaper of the Year Award in  In recent years the paper and its staff have picked up a number of other awards for being the best community newspaper of the year and has scooped journalist of the year awards in the awards established by our parent company Archant.

One of the most successful campaigns – run for more than 30 years ,has been our Christmas Toy Appeal for needy children, which we run in conjunction with care group Community Links. When we started the campaign we had a target of 500 toys, which we thought we would never reach. But we should never have doubted the power of the paper, nor the fantastic readers that have grown up with the paper. As the paper and Community Links have grown, so has the target. Last year, the community helped us raise 13,000 toys, which were distributed to children locally over Christmas. We have had celebrities from all over the world launch our appeal each year – yet the small donation from a pensioner or a child – showing compassion and love for those less fortunate than themselves – is what I think makes Newham a special place to live and work .

Newham’s profile stepped up a gear when the borough became the centrepiece of the London Olympics Bid, and won the right to stage the Games in 2012. A day after being awarded the Games, Newham suffered its share of tragedy when lives were lost in the London Bombings. But out of that tragedy came a community unity which we all felt proud of.

The borough stood firm with the rest of East London, the rest of London, and vowed to work together in peace and harmony and not to be beaten. Newham is a place to live and work and to be proud of. We have proudly worked with Newham Council in bringing awards like Shining Through which highlight the marvellous achievements of Newham’s young people. We also highlight other stories of courage in our own Shining Lights features, on the the brilliance of our young citizens.

For seven years we have ran our award-winning Reading Together scheme ithe paper has helped improve the literacy standards of young people. Teachers, pupils and parents work together for the great good of our future.

It reminds us how fortunate we are to have jobs we really love…and why we came into journalism…to hopefully make a difference.

We hope to remain the heartbeat of East London now and  so for many years to come .

Archant is the UK's largest independently-owned regional media business. It is a community media company active in the fields of regional newspaper and magazine publishing, contract printing and internet communications. All its titles and web sites serve clearly defined communities, based around locations or interest groups. As a private company it employs 3000 people right across England and Scotland. Its head office is in Norwich and it has an annual turnover of £194 million. The newspapers division, Archant Regional, produces four daily regional newspapers and more than 85 weekly titles with a combined circulation of three million copies every week.

It is a UK top five regional newspaper publisher. It also publishes many of the group’s 120 websites and a number of its magazines.It’s web sites are award winning and recognised nationally.

Archant also owns three magazine companies, which between them produce around 75 magazines. Archant Specialist is the consumer magazine publishing division. Archant Life produces a growing number of city and county lifestyle magazine titles and several French magazines. Archant Life also producea suite of top quality, glossy consumer magazines in London publishing over 580,000 magazines each month in the Capital.

Archant Dialogue is the contract and customer publishing arm of the group. The Archant Print division has two main printing facilities at Norwich and Ipswich. It prints the majority of the group’s newspaper titles and offers a contract print service at both sites. You can find out more about Archant by clicking here - Archant.