ABSTRACT
Nearly all British newspapers or groups of newspapers own their own printing facilities. Some early newspapers were founded and owned by printers. Contract printing was common during the 19th century, but newspaper companies from the time of Northcliffe found that they had better control over their product by having their own print works. Today this has been rationalized so that many weekly papers and some evenings are printed from centralized plants, either under the same ownership, or as a result of sharing arrangements. At the same time some companies that have replanted with sophisticated modern presses have been able to offer such reasonable terms to other less well provided newspapers that there has been a movement back into contract printing since the 1980s both by small newspapers and some new titles that have appeared.
