The Valley Breeze is a free weekly newspaper published Thursdays. Its first edition, founded in 1996, serves suburban Cumberland and Lincoln, R.I. with a distribution of 17,500 papers. The second edition, started in 1999, serves North Smithfield, Burrillville, and Woonsocket, R.I. and Blackstone, Mass. with a distribution of 18,000. In February, 2006, The Valley Breeze purchased The Observer, a paid weekly newspaper in Smithfield, R.I., and the North Star, a free weekly in North Providence, R.I. Both communities are adjacent to our primary market. The Observer was converted to a free newspaper in March 2006, and we now have more than 52,000 community newspapers to offer each week in suburban northern Rhode Island.

The Valley Breeze reaches more homes, by far, than any competing daily or direct mail weekly paper, according to our independent auditors, and
hundreds of local merchants choose our paper each week to reach our readers. In addition, as many as half of our papers stay in homes for an entire week. We have earned the Gold Standard Award of our audit company, the Circulation Verification Council of St. Louis, Missouri (www.cvcaudit.com). We have an audited readership of 86% penetration in our primary market, and 75% in our secondary market, the highest penetration levels of any paper in our category (of the hundreds audited by CVC). Thank you for your interest.