CAMBOURNE CRIER

The first informal issue of the Cambourne Crier was photocopied and stapled and distributed by community development at South Cambs District Council for the Christmas issue 1999, and followed by a few more issues at 3 month intervals.

There were no more than 200 homes at this time, a small grant to cover 6 months of funding (£400) was awarded by the District Council to a group of residents who voluntarily produced the start of the more formal Cambourne Crier (and the magazine we have now from August 2001 to March 2002) and resulted after that short time in a self funding organisation known as Cambourne.net.

They also had a web site, and relieved South Cambs of the responsibilty and cost of producing the photocopying and also staff time, not many adverts were required to cover initial costs, as only 8 pages or so were printed each month, the magazine has seen significant growth in size and numbers distributed (now 40 pages and 3300 copies). The printing was initially contracted to a Bar Hill company.

The Crier has never failed to appear in all those years but a hiccup caused a weeks delay when the Bar Hill company managed to mix up the CD's and printed the previous months again!

This production has required significant amounts of advertising to cover costs, during the first 7 or 8 years before costs escalated a reserve fund was established and community contributions provided, this has been cut back somewhat with the printing costs increasing (now approx 60p per copy or £2000 per month including distribution costs) but a small contrbution is paid by the printer for providing editorial copy which is used to fund community groups when possible.

The editors are still volunteers, but for several years one resident did the editorial work largely on his own, he sometimes worked all night to finish it and proved hard to replace when his job took him away from Cambourne, It now requires a team of volunteers!

At one point a resident purchased printing and collating machines and did the work for 2 years to try and keep the costs under control, but as the numbers grew it became unviable due to space and time restrictions.

It required the machines to never become faulty to ensure the Crier was ready in time!.
Even registering a company to claim back the VAT for the cost of the machines meant it was not cost effective.

Now a commercial operator prints the magazine and more recently also handles the adverts, admininstration and distrbution, the work became too much for the volunteer who was planning his retirement, and it proved impossible to attract another committed volunteer once they realised how much work was involved.

The Cambridge Evening News asked to meet the team a few years ago and discuss a joint venture that they would produce the magazine and use the editorial input from residents, when we looked at the Histon News which was done on a similar arrangement we found it somewhat lacking in content and not at all acceptable. They have also tried to start their own weekly paper (they were unable to use the name Crier as in other places, but they don't seem to last long and only being delivered to a small number of homes, Their latest effort seem to be plagiarased from the Crier, certainly the contacts page is and they are using contributors from the Crier. They will not offer affordable advertising for local organisations.

Advert prices have not increased yet but the number of adverts has, 20 pages of editorial and 20 pages of adverts to offset some of the extra costs but of course results in increased admin time and extra printing costs.

With another 1000 homes to supply over the next few years this will have to be reviewed soon, but it will remain a bargain compared with other publications. We still rely heavily on a few editors who give their time to ensure one of the most succesful additions to Cambourne Life is maintaned and so much valued by so many organsations including the library and surgery.

Item written by
Roger Hume

Updated April 15, 2011