Reader research told us that our audience read the red-tops, overwhelmingly The Sun. We produced a monthly paper that both looked like The Sun and shared its economy of expression and bluntness of phrase – communicating in a style and idiom contractors understood and trusted.

We supplemented this with face-to-face contact, handing out copies to earn the trust and respect of contractors arriving for work at dawn and – in those dim and distant pre-Facebook days – use the verbal feedback to inform our editorial strategy and generate discussion.