A South Essex weekly newspaper series has closed, less than a year after its launch by the Yellow Advertiser group.

The Southend Mail and Basildon Mail were on sale at newsagents for 30p.

It is understood the papers, which also covered the Castle Point, Thurrock and Brentwood areas, failed to meet their targets for readers and advertisers.

The combined average weekly sale for the titles for the last six months of 1999 was just 836 copies, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The size of the tabloid papers had dwindled to only 20 pages.

The Basildon-based Yellow Advertiser group was taken over by Southnews two years ago.

Publisher Michelle Wylie said: "Launching the Mail was something that we had wanted to do for a while. There is no one reason it has been closed.

"I did not expect a good ABC figure as I know it can take years and we were not daft enough to think that we could have huge figures overnight.

"But I do not feel we could have gained anything by running it any longer."

She said there would be no job losses from the closure as staff would continue to work on other papers.

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