South London Press closes suddenly after 160 years in print

One of London’s oldest surviving local newspapers, the South London Press, has closed suddenly after 160 years – leaving even more of the capital without regular news reporting.

The demise of the SLP has been particularly felt among football fans, with its highly-respected sports editor Richard Cawley confirming the demise of the paper on social media on Tuesday afternoon.

Its coverage of Charlton Athletic, Wimbledon, Millwall, Crystal Palace and more recently Bromley, as well as non-league sides such as Dulwich Hamlet, Cray Valley Paper Mills and Welling United, had become the paper’s main selling point for many.

Early clues that the Catford-based newspaper was in trouble came at the weekend, when new stories stopped appearing on its website – particularly noticeable when both Charlton and Wimbledon won the League One and Two play-off finals at Wembley. The website was taken down altogether on Tuesday morning.

It is believed that insolvency proceedings are under way, Press Gazette reported.

The SLP, which was founded in 1865, had traditionally covered Lewisham, Southwark, Lambeth and Wandsworth, and was printed twice-weekly until as recently as seven years ago. It had been passed through several owners this century – and lost its headquarters in Streatham – before ending up in the hands of Street Runners, a leaflet delivery firm, in 2017.

But its coverage area grew and grew over the years in an attempt to capture lucrative local authority advertising – something not available to online-only outlets like The Greenwich Wire – with much of the paper being padded out by press releases and free copy from the BBC’s Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The traditional local paper for Greenwich, the Mercury, was closed and merged into the SLP in 2019, while it later incorporated a west London title which had been opened and then closed by the SLP’s owners.

The closure leaves much of Lambeth without a news outlet. Southwark News continues to cover that borough, while a new online outlet, Salamander, recently launched in Lewisham.

Talk about the future of our local news next month

Indie News Week – which promotes and fundraises for independent outlets like The Greenwich Wire – returns next month, and there’ll be three opportunities to discuss the future of local news, both across London and more locally. The Greenwich Wire is involved in two of them.

On Monday June 9, London Newsmakers will be looking at the future of local news from a capital-wide perspective at Goldsmiths University in New Cross. Speakers will include Jim Waterson of London Centric and Tabitha Stapeley of Social Streets CIC, which publishes local news outlets in east London. Sign up via Eventbrite.

On Thursday June 12 and Thursday June 19, The Greenwich Wire‘s Darryl Chamberlain will be teaming up with Dorothy Stein from the new site covering Lewisham, Salamander, to discuss local news in our boroughs and what can be done to revive it.

We’ll discuss what’s happening now, what should happen in the future and what you can do now to ensure that properly-sourced, even-handed local news thrives in our boroughs. Tickets are free, but please sign up so we have an idea of numbers.

On Thursday June 12 at 7.30pm, we’ll be at Mycenae House in Blackheath. Sign up via Eventbrite.

And on Thursday June 19 at 7pm, we’ll be at Deptford Lounge, just off Deptford High Street. Sign up via Eventbrite.