The ''Pink'un'' was a weekly, paid-for newspaper, and now website, focusing on

Norwich City Norwich City Football Club is a professional football club based in Norwich, Norfolk, England. The club competes in the Championship, the second tier of English football. The club was founded in 1902. Since 1935, Norwich have played their h ...

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

club and also

Non-League football Non-League football describes association football, football leagues played outside the top leagues of a country. Usually, it describes leagues which are not fully professional. The term is primarily used for football in England, where it is ...

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

, England. The paper was published every Saturday evening in

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

during the football season. Published by

Archant Archant Limited is a newspaper and magazine publishing company with headquarters in Norwich, England. The group publishes four daily newspapers, around 50 weekly newspapers, and 80 consumer and contract magazines. The company is a subsidiary of ...

, the newspaper was closely linked to its sister publication, the ''

Norwich Evening News The ''Norwich Evening News'' is a daily local newspaper published in Norwich, Norfolk, England. It covers the city and the surrounding suburbs, and is published by Archant. It is the best-selling newspaper in Norwich. As of 28 February 2011 the ...

''. Although the paper edition is no longer published, the website survives and receives a large amount of traffic. According to a 2007 article in the ''

Eastern Daily Press The ''Eastern Daily Press'' (''EDP'') is a regional newspaper covering Norfolk, northern parts of Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to ...

'',

"Take, for example, the PinkUn message board: in September, when City were clearly beginning to show their true colours there were 615,000-page impressions; the following month it had increased to 1,152,000, helped no doubt by the sacking of Peter Grant and the consequent hunt for his replacement. The day that
Glenn Roeder Glenn Victor Roeder (13 December 1955 – 28 February 2021) was an English professional football player and manager. As a player, Roeder played as a defender for Arsenal, Leyton Orient, Queens Park Rangers, Notts County, Newcastle United, Watf ...
was appointed, 30 October, the ''PinkUn'' site received 255,000 page impressions and November, to date, has seen 408,000."

Origin of name

The name of the publication derives from the tradition of many city-based evening newspapers in Britain to produce a special weekly edition with football news, published each weekend. They were printed by their mainstream newspaper on pink paper, hence the name. Some were included with Friday or Saturday editions, and some were sold separately. Some had the formal name of their host newspaper, although they would be known locally as "the Pink 'Un", while others had the formal masthead name of "Pink 'Un". Their production tended to cease from the 1960s onwards as mainstream evening newspapers also declined. Somerset Maugham also mentioned the ''Pink 'Un'' in his novel ''

Cakes and Ale ''Cakes and Ale, or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard'' (1930) is a novel by the British author W. Somerset Maugham. Maugham exposes the misguided social snobbery levelled at the character Rosie Driffield, whose frankness, honesty, and sexual free ...

'' Chapter IX,

Arthur Conan Doyle Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Hol ...

Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes () is a Detective fiction, fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "Private investigator, consulting detective" in his stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with obser ...

adventure '' The Blue Carbuncle'' and

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

in his novel ''

Burmese Days ''Burmese Days'' is the first novel and second book by English writer George Orwell, published in 1934. Set in British Burma during the waning days of empire, when Burma was ruled from Delhi as part of British India, the novel serves as "a po ...

'', chapter 5. In addition to the ''Pink 'Un'', a lesser number of such papers also produced a "Green 'Un", printed on green paper, which covered

horse racing Horse racing is an equestrian performance activity, typically involving two or more horses ridden by jockeys (or sometimes driven without riders) over a set distance for competition. It is one of the most ancient of all sports, as its bas ...

References

External links

''Pink 'Un'' Homepage''Norwich Evening News''
Newspapers published in Norfolk Sports newspapers published in the United Kingdom Saturday newspapers {{sports-newspaper-stub