News reached us yesterday that the Isle of Wight newspaper, The Isle of Wight Gazette, has stopped being publishing as a newspaper.
Originally launched in 2008 by Martin Potter as a free newspaper, it asked those that picked it up to make donations to the Earl Mountbatten Hospice.
In March 2010, the then-boss of the Earl Mountbatten Hospice, Graham Elderfield, made the decision to stop allowing the IW Gazette to collect donations for them. The Gazette claimed to VB that they had “raised over £38,000 for the Hospice over the time.”
Following this action, a number of Island shops that previously stocked the IW Gazette, stopped carrying it.
Just after this, the IW Gazette changed their business model, moving from free, to charge 30p to buy the paper. It’s unclear how many they sold, although they claimed “over 70,000 readers.”
Most recently, they got upset with an Island Website, Island Pulse, who claimed the IW Gazette was in liquidation. The Gazette claimed they were going to “issue legal action,” against the site. The report was incorrect, it was the previous company, ‘Isle of Wight Gazette Ltd ‘, that was struck off.
Image: seattlemunicipalarchives under CC BY 2.0
