Newspaper Club is building a service to help people make their own newspapers.

During the last week it has developed the Postcode Paper project in a bid to demonstrate its publishing prowess and put some of the data from the Government’s beta data.gov.uk data repository into people’s hands.

It’s a prototype of a service for people moving into a new area.

“In our exercise we imagined you might receive it after paying your council tax for the first time. It gathers information about your area [from data.gov.uk], such as local services, environmental information and crime statistics.”

How neat is that? Newspaper Club has seeded 50 copies of the Postcode Paper to a room full of civil servants in a hope that they will be excited by the possibilities and open up more government data to the public.

Newspaper Club is planning on launching early next year when it will offer a basic product of a 12–page, tabloid–size newspaper in black and white or colour in quantities from 5 to 5000.

“If you’re experienced with design software you’ll be able to upload a PDF to us and we’ll sort out printing and delivery. Or, if you need a bit more help, we’ll have a tool where you can upload your own text and pictures and we’ll help you lay it out on the page so it looks lovely. Then you can get it printed etc.”

(via @hrwaldram)