UK regional press: why the AFN went west (coroner's verdict: old age)

Alan Garth

The demise of the AFN (Association of Free Newspapers) prompts reflections of the effects the frees have had on the regional press as a whole.

Playing the pathologist

Why the AFN went west (coroner's verdict: old age)

Alan Garth

A robust infant seemingly cut off in its prime, the frees' trade association was not so much the victim of the big groups' exit as a movement that has fulfilled its destiny. Its legacy - quality.

The Association of Free Newspapers has died and is being buried with a strange name on its tombstone. There are few mourners and the silence is not so much reverential as deafening.

This was, after all, an organisation which represented the fastest growing media sector of an...

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