Baylis trust snaps up new titles

What's the similarity between the Maidenhead Advertiser and The Guardian? Answer: they are both run by companies owned by trusts set up to safeguard their papers' independence and tradition of public service.

The Advertiser's publisher is Baylis and Co, a charitable trust established by its former editor and proprietor Louis Baylis in the 1960s. The Baylis family is still intimately involved in the running of the company, with two fifth-generation members on its board of directors.

And the group appears to be going great guns too because, in these dark days for newsprint, it has just expanded its operations by acquiring the Windsor & Eton Express and the Slough & South Bucks Express titles from Dunfermline Press.

It's a neat geographical fit for Baylis, giving the group a large slice of Berkshire. No wonder Jeremy Spooner, its chairman and chief executive, is so delighted, calling it "the biggest expansion the company has ever undertaken."

One small criticism though. The Advertiser's website, at 8.30am today, was still leading with a story about Reading football club's forthcoming relegation decider. Local papers will not attract people to their online platforms if they don't keep them updated.