The Valley Breeze is a free weekly newspaper published Wednesdays and Thursdays distributing more than 58,000 community newspapers in northern Rhode Island.

Its first edition, founded in 1996, serves suburban Cumberland and Lincoln, Rhode Island with a distribution of 16,500 papers. The second edition, started in 1999, serves North Smithfield and Woonsocket, R.I. and Blackstone, Mass. with a distribution of 16,000.

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 original market. The Observer was converted to the free Valley Breeze & Observer newspaper, with a distribution 10,500, in March 2006, and the North Star became The North Providence Breeze, with a distribution of 6,700.

In August 2009, our fifth edition of The Valley Breeze, serving Pawtucket, debuted with a distribution of 8,900 newspapers.

The Valley Breeze newspapers reach 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 local shoppers. In addition, as many as half of our papers stay in homes for the 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 with 88% 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.