› Independent Newspaper
An independent newspaper is a paper that is not published by a major publishing company. A typically example of an independent newspaper would the student newspapers that are frequently distributed amongst students and faculty at universities and other institutes of higher education around the world. Most independent newspapers will not have the budget of typical daily published newspapers and as a result they will be published less frequently. In many cases they will rely heavily on advertising to fund their publication and as such they will contain a higher proportion of advertisements than mainstream newspapers.
Many journalists started their careers or at least discovered their love of journalism by writing for an independent newspaper, typically their university’s student newspaper. Independent newspapers often rely on amateur journalists to write their content and as a result they will typically feature a number of contributions from budding amateurs. In some cases this can lead to the quality of the journalism being slightly lower than one would expect from a mainstream commercial newspaper; however there have been numerous examples in the past of independent newspapers that have a very high standard of writing and journalism.
An independent newspaper should not be confused with the number of independent fanzines that are published by people involved in a variety of different cultural movements. Although these publications do share some common features with independent newspapers they are very different entities and should not be confused with one another.