The Telford Journal is distributed to around 50,000 local homes. Most copies go through letter boxes across the new town area but it is sold in some outlets, with a cover price of 15p.
The paper is based at the Shropshire Star offices in Waterloo Road, Ketley. It is printed on a Wednesday evening and distributed the following day.
The Journal aims to be a family newspaper, reflecting the lives of its readers and carrying a mix of news, sport and features. Every week it has a special Property section, an authorative guide to homes on sale across the area, backed up by informative articles on homes and lifestyles.
On the news front, the Journal aims to cover the major topics of the day in Telford and provide a round up every week of just what’s been happening in the new town; the serious, the sad, the happy and the offbeat.
It also carries regular specialist columns. It runs a popular Playmates Club for children and its sports columns are keenly followed.
The Editor is Phil Gillam, a journalist with more than 30 years’ experience. Phil began his career on his hometown newspaper, the Shrewsbury Chronicle and then went on to work for the Sunday Independent in Devon and then the Hull Times in Yorkshire before returning to the Midlands to join the Staffordshire Newsletter and later the Stafford Chronicle.
Phil then returned to his beloved Shropshire in 1988 to join the Shropshire Star where he worked in both features and news for 16 years. Most recently he worked for seven years on the Express & Star at Wolverhampton.
During his varied career, Phil has interviewed leading politicians including Michael Heseltine, Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair, and top entertainers, among them film star Joan Collins, comedian Jimmy Tarbuck, and the great Ray Davies of The Kinks. In his feature writing days,
Phil flew in a jet fighter with the RAF, spent days alongside firefighters, police officers and ambulance crews, and went to sea with the RNLI.