A new weekly sports paper launched by former Bristol Evening Post journalists missed two issues after its second-hand computer server broke down the day before press day.
The server of Your Sport went down on Friday lunchtime and the paper was due to go to print on Saturday night, leaving little time to purchase a new one.
Newsagents contacted by Press Gazette received a note from the paper’s wholesalers apologising for the paper not being sent due to “publishing problems”, giving no indication when it would be back on the shelves.
A spokesman for the new company shrugged off rumours that the paper was facing closure after just six months.
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He told Press Gazette: “Everything runs on one server at the moment and it all just collapsed.
“The engineers came to look at it but said it had had its best days. They couldn’t get it back up and running again and so we couldn’t get the pages off it at all and couldn’t get any emails.
“We had to knock that edition on the head. We are hoping to be back up and running soon, we are working towards coming out next week. It’s a massive investment if we want to do it properly.
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“The papers are doing great, rumours that we are closing are not true. This was just one of those very frustrating things about trying to run a business on a small scale with small budgets.”
The 48-page sports paper focusing on grassroots sport was launched by ex- Bristol Evening Post staff, including former sports editor of 14 years Chris Bartlett, last September with a six-figure sum.
After a peak of 5,500 sales at 80p, Your Sport now claims an average of around 2,900 sales per week. The first part of its website was launched three weeks ago, focusing on motorcross.
It was launched with the investment of six major shareholders including Bartlett, who is Your Sport editor.
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