<== Site Review (2005-01-24) ==>

Valley Journals publishes a selection of newspapers that are distributed in mailboxes throughout Salt Lake County. The newspapers target different communities in the Salt Lake Valley. The portfolio includes Salt Lake West Journal, Salt Lake South Journal, West Valley Journal, Salt Lake North Journal, Salt Lake South Journal and Murray Journal, The Sandy Journal, Taylorsville / Kearns Journal and South Valley Journal.

The journals share a fair amount of content but often include articles and ads targetted at particular sections of the valley.

The journal's web site is geared toward selling advertisements. The web site indicates that the company began in 1991 and recently expanded. They now have a total distribution of 325,000 copies. This compares favorably to SLSites.com which has a readership of about 50 or so people.

An ultra targetted newspaper has great appeal to small companies wanting to reach particular segments of the market. I think the newspaper has great potential as it helps people develop a since of place. Many of the articles concern items such as the Pedal Pass, off leash areas in parks.

One of the most promising areas of the targetted journals is the sports section which can cover local high school sports in greater detail.

The Valley Journal mentions that they will publish a local rag for skiing under the URL Ski News.biz.

With a little creative searching, you can find PDF versions of current and past issues of the journals on the company's web site. To do so, you should click on your neighborhood. This page shows the journals serving your community. You then select the journal of interest. The Journal page should have boxes with links to different editions of the journal. Click on the box. This brings up a confusing framed window (e.g. Salt Lake West Side). The confusing framed page has instructions to click the link below. By this they mean click the link immediately below the sentence...don't click the link in the frame. The link in the frame loads Adobe. After clicking the link, you need to wait a few minutes for the PDF to appear. If the PDF doesn't crash your computer, you will be able to read the paper.