i) To bring together everyone in our village in peace and harmony;
ii) To celebrate the diversity of the human spirit by encouraging and developing local talent,
iii) To promote communication between all people
and
iv) To offer a platform for the dissemination of information and ideas. 

'Barton Today is a community magazine with over 6,000 readers. Delivered FREE every single month to every home in the village, we are non-profit-making; all surpluses go back into your magazine. The Editor, his family, friends and associates do not take a single penny in income from the enterprise, all work is given freely.  We are not controlled by, or affiliated to, any political, religious, social or commercial group.'

YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! You've read it all before, but just consider what that means:
Every single month we put together a 48 page, often a 52 page magazine full of news, features, cartoons and articles.  
Pages are in colour as well as black and white. 
Folk send in contributions.  These have to be typed up, laid out, collated and compiled. 
A theme for the magazine has to be devised and our reporters have to visit local groups and events. 
We need to meet a printer's deadline and then distribute counted copies, often with inserts, to our deliverers. 
All of this is done by unpaid volunteers without any formal hierarchical structure imposed on them (our Editor has suffered before under 'committees' and believes that people who do their own thing are far more creative than those who simply obey orders).  
We have no big corporation or religious organisation to fall back on, so we rely on advertisers who support us, not out of duty, but because they know that advertising with Barton Today works effectively for them.  That means that a lot of our time is also spent dealing with businesses and setting out adverts as well as articles. 
It's not easy, but it's fun!  We have a great and ever-expanding team who laugh a lot.  And we've not done too badly - we've received  THREE  awards in the first three years (two in the first six months) and a website that attracts around 10,000 visitors a month.
And we haven't really started yet... 

                                                                                                          Care to Join us?