IT’S early morning and The Highway Printers’ entrance in New Germany is a hive of activity with the distribution company’s trucks rolling in to collect the bundles of Caxton Local Media’s newspapers for distribution.
Distributors load the heavy bundles, while supervisors with clipboards and drivers check the quantities.
While most folks know the newspaper cycle from collecting news and selling adverts to layout, production and finally how the printing works, the actual delivery of the newspaper – and its challenges – to your post box, is not so well known.
At Caxton Durban, a total of 221 325 newspapers are delivered door-to-door to homes and businesses in the eight areas of distribution every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with up to eight trucks being used every day. In addition to the door-to-door household delivery, local businesses also receive a copy.
Bulk drops of newspapers are delivered to key venues such as libraries, supermarkets, shopping centres, garages, post offices and so on.
These bulk drops are for the public to collect their copies of the newspaper if they do not live in the distribution footprint.
There are a few things that one should know and be aware of which can affect the delivery of the newspaper to your home or business and how you may receive it.
- Some post boxes are too small to accommodate the newspaper (especially the large month end editions), and if our distributors try to squeeze it in, the postbox may crack. A 100mm round tube fitted on the fence next to the post box is HIGHLY recommended
- Distributors are prohibited from inserting papers into gates or fences or throwing the paper into the yard to prevent them from getting wet, shredded by dogs or jammed in electric gates. Therefore, no post box or tube visible means no delivery of the paper.
- If rain is predicted then the newspapers are placed in plastic bags, but sometimes the weather man is wrong and unfortunately some newspapers are wet.
- Occasionally we receive complaints from residents saying they have not received their newspaper – it could be a passer-by has nicked it out the post box. This is most prevalent in busy thoroughfares.
- Homes which have granny flats are urged to fit two tubes / postboxes which will be an indication to the distributors that two copies of the newspaper is required.
Note the delivery day of the Northglen News is on Tuesday, between 9am and 4pm. It’s not guaranteed that the newspaper is delivered at the same time every week as the distribution department could encounter problems such as factory breakdowns, vehicle breakdowns, weather and so on.
Unfortunately, errors do happen and if you are not receiving your copy of your favourite newspaper or see an incident with the distribution team that you would like to bring to our attention please call our toll free Distribution Number, 0800 4444 66 or email distribution@dbn.caxton.co.za (please remember to include your name and surname, contact number and physical address).
We will make every effort to ensure you do receive your newspaper going forward and investigate why there may be a problem with you receiving it.
Caxton Local Newspapers distribution is monitored and audited with each newspaper needing to be accounted for and allocated. Quarterly audits are performed by the Audit Bureau of Circulation which issues our Verified Free Distribution Certificate, this means that the distributors are not able to give out random papers as people ask for them and are only allowed deliver as per the rules mentioned above.
Caxton Local Media Covid-19 reporting
Dear reader, As your local news provider, we have the duty of keeping you factually informed on Covid-19 developments. As you may have noticed, mis- and disinformation (also known as “fake news”) is circulating online. Caxton Local Media is determined to filter through the masses of information doing the rounds and to separate truth from untruth in order to keep you adequately informed. Local newsrooms follow a strict pre-publication fact-checking protocol. A national task team has been established to assist in bringing you credible news reports on Covid-19. Readers with any comments or queries may contact National Group Editor Irma Green (irma@caxton.co.za) or Legal Adviser Helene Eloff (helene@caxton.co.za). At the time of going to press, the contents of this feature mirrored South Africa’s lockdown regulations.
