The Shropshire Star is reputedly the fifth biggest-selling regional evening newspaper in Britain. It is based in Ketley, Telford, and covers the whole of Shropshire plus parts of Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Mid Wales. Currently edited by Martin Wright, the Shropshire Star publishes one edition on Monday through Saturday. In the first half of 2012, the newspaper had a daily circulation of 49,751, but this fell to 46,498 in the second half of 2012 and paid circulation had declined to just 19,291 by December 2018. It is printed at its editorial headquarters in Ketley. The Shropshire Star has been under the continuous ownership of the Graham/Meier family almost since its inception. The family controls the publication through their equity stake in Midland News Association, which also owns the Express & Star newspaper.
History
The Shropshire Star has been in circulation since Monday 5 October 1964, inheriting a nightly circulation of around 19,000 from the old Shropshire edition of the Express & Star. Despite criticism from other journalistic and publishing sources, the papers' circulation increased to 20,000 by 1965 and had reached 100,000 by 1984. The Midland News Association board saw an opportunity with the growth of Dawley New Town - later renamed Telford - and produced a successful news and advertising product to serve a county which is a mixture of agriculture and industrial areas. The Shropshire Star later became the first evening newspaper in Europe to use web-fed offset printing, which refers to the use of rolls of paper supplied to the printing press.
Online media
The Shropshire Star publishes breaking news and sport content online each day, in addition to regular blogs and unique video content. Its website, shropshirestar.com, was launched in 1997. According to an ABC report, the Shropshire Star website had, at one time, the second highest rise in average monthly unique users across the whole of the regional press - up 41.8 per cent to 469,827. August 2012 saw the website re-launched in a responsive web design alongside its sister title expressandstar.com – believed to be the first of any other regional newspaper websites in the UK. A Shropshire Star App for iPad and iPhone was launched in January 2012, using page-turning technology to mimic the look and feel of the actual newspaper. The website also offers free access to the weekly Chronicle and Journal series. By 2015, the term Shropshire Star was being inputted into search engines more than 200,000 times per calendar month, which made it the most popular search string with the wordShropshire in the request.
Jeremy Clarkson - first wrote motoring articles for this paper. He recalled: "I started small, on the Shropshire Star with little Peugeots and Fiats and worked my way up to Ford Granadas and Rovers, until, after about seven years, I was allowed to drive an Aston Martin Lagonda."
Editions
Three different editions: Telford, Shrewsbury, and rural Shropshire and Mid Wales.
