Asian Standard
Overview
Asian Standard is a free weekly newspaper published in Bradford, West Yorkshire, for British Asian readers. It is published by RF Publishing, also styled RF Media and Publishing, and it grew out of Asian Sunday, the free newspaper launched in Bradford in 2011 that was described as the United Kingdom's first free Sunday newspaper for the Asian community. As Asian Sunday moved to a fully digital platform, Asian Standard continued as the group's free weekly print title, replacing the regional print titles of Asian Sunday.
The paper carries news and features targeted mainly at a local South Asian readership, and it expanded from its Bradford base into regional editions for Kirklees, the North East and Leeds, with a London edition launched subsequently and plans announced to expand into further cities. Its managing editor is Fatima Patel, who created Asian Sunday in 2011 and who has led the group's newspapers throughout their growth from a single Bradford title into a family of regional editions.
Origins in Asian Sunday
The newspaper group was born in Bradford in 2011 with the launch of Asian Sunday. The title was created by editor Fatima Patel, managing director of the publishing group, and was thought to be the first free Sunday paper aimed at the Asian community, highlighting news that focused on South Asians living and working in the UK. It was published every other Sunday in its early form, delivered to 10,000 households in Bradford and the surrounding district, with a further 25,000 copies distributed through supermarkets and offices.
Patel's own account of the founding has been widely reported. She grew up in Bradford, where her family ran a newsagent's shop, and as a teenager she delivered papers for her parents — papers which, she felt, did not reflect her concerns or experience. She founded a South Asian newspaper in 2011 because, in her words, representation matters, and communities told her they trusted the newspaper to tell the stories they wanted told. Initially aimed specifically at the South Asian community, the paper grew over the following years to become an integral part of Bradford's other diverse communities, and was described by supporters as among the most trusted and loyally read publications in the city.
From Asian Sunday to Asian Standard
As the group developed, the Sunday title expanded regionally, launching editions beyond Bradford — including in Kirklees and in the North East — and, in November 2013, a London edition of Asian Sunday, launched at an event in the House of Commons and distributed to 20,000 London households as well as through tube stations, supermarkets, retailers and businesses. That early London venture anticipated the later expansion of Asian Standard into the capital.
The transition to Asian Standard came when Asian Sunday went digital-only. Announcing that change, the publisher explained that Asian Sunday would continue through its website, social media and an Asian Sunday TV YouTube channel, with programming that included a chat show and a cookery club, but that a traditional newspaper still meant a great deal to many people and it would have been wrong to abandon loyal print readers. The group therefore continued publishing its free weekly title, Asian Standard, which replaced the regional print titles of Asian Sunday. Asian Standard thus inherited the print readership, the regional edition structure and the community role of the Sunday paper, on a weekly cycle.
Publisher and Leadership
Asian Standard is published by RF Publishing Ltd — also referred to as RF Media and Publishing Ltd — based in Bradford. Business listings for the company place it in the city, trading as Asian Standard News and Asian Sunday, and its titles have been associated at different times with publishing operations run by Fatima Patel, who is managing editor of the Standard and managing director of the wider group, and with her mother Rokaiya Patel: the London edition of Asian Standard was described at its launch as guided by the mother-daughter team of Rokaiya and Fatima Patel.
Fatima Patel's position as a female owner and editor in the sector has been a recurring theme of coverage of the titles. At the 2013 London launch she said that Asian Sunday London was close to her heart personally and professionally, that she hoped it would continue her journey as a female entrepreneur, and that, as probably the only female-owned Asian newspaper, it could show the community that dreams can become reality — describing her own path from a Bradford corner shop and its paper rounds to owning a national newspaper. Community contributors echo that founding ethos: at the Leeds launch, a local solicitor who had pressed for an edition for two years said the community had been missing a newspaper that spoke specifically for it.
Editions and Expansion
The Bradford edition is the paper's home edition, the first launched under the group's 2011 beginnings. From Bradford the titles expanded to Kirklees — the borough that includes Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Batley — and to the North East of England, where an edition is centred on Newcastle. Those editions made Asian Standard a regional newspaper family rather than a single-city title, each edition regionalised, in the publisher's stated approach, to amplify grassroots voices and provide news resonating with the specific interests and needs of each local community.
The fourth regional edition, for Leeds, was launched in February 2021. The free weekly's Leeds edition is available every Monday from major supermarkets — named at launch as Asda, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Morrisons stores across the city — as well as from leading Asian stores and Leeds businesses, and can be delivered on subscription to readers' homes. The launch edition ran to 32 pages of news, information and features about the local Leeds community, and the growth created two new jobs, for an additional reporter and a delivery driver. At that launch the paper said it planned to expand into a further six cities by 2025.
The London Edition
A London edition of Asian Standard was the next phase of the expansion. It was launched by RF Media and Publishing at the UK Parliament, with the newspaper available from the beginning of November, as a free South Asian weekly for the capital. The publisher noted that the idea of bringing the South Asian community's stories to London had first been conceived by Fatima Patel in 2013 — the year of the Asian Sunday London launch — but that a personal setback, a ruptured tendon and a benign tumour, had disrupted the vision at that time; ten years on, the Asian Standard London launch was presented as the milestone that completed it.
The London launch followed the group's regionalisation approach: a paper chronicling the stories, achievements and aspirations of London's South Asian community in its own edition, rather than a copy of the northern titles. The event also honoured the achievements of the actress Manisha Koirala. With London added, the print newspaper was reported as available in editions for Bradford, Kirklees, Leeds and the North East, with London as the next phase of UK-wide expansion and further titles planned.
Content and Community Role
Asian Standard carries news and features targeted mainly at a local South Asian readership in each of its edition areas. Its stated ethos, from the Asian Sunday founding onwards, was to create a publication that was diverse and inclusive, and that spoke about real rather than stereotyped issues surrounding the South Asian community living in the UK. That meant community news, business coverage, achievements and experiences from within the community, presented as a forum in which business and wider communities could share news, create connections and be represented.
Supporters quoted at the Leeds launch described the same role. A partner at a Leeds law firm said he had been part of the newspaper's journey, had seen it become a well-recognised and respected publication in local Asian communities, and had shared its vision and ethos from the outset, pointing in particular to its online presence and global reach; the Leeds edition, he said, was a natural progression, providing a platform for business and wider communities to share news and experiences and create opportunities through connections. The managing editor said readers had pressed for a Leeds edition because they wanted the sense of belonging generated by the family of publications.
Bradford Base
Bradford is one of Britain's most diverse cities, with a large South Asian population whose families have been part of the city's life for generations, and it provided both the readership and the founding story of these newspapers. The group was first established there in 2011, its offices remained in Bradford as it expanded, and its publishers presented the city as proof of their model: a paper rooted in one community's experience that other communities, in Kirklees, the North East, Leeds and London, then asked to have replicated for them.
That Bradford identity was also part of the group's public recognition. At the 2013 House of Commons launch of the London edition of Asian Sunday, guests included London and Bradford MPs and Bradford-born figures from entertainment, and the newspaper honoured Bradford singer Kimberley Walsh for her contribution to the entertainment industry — an early sign of the awards and celebration events through which the titles marked community achievement. The Religion Media Centre, reporting a Bradford interfaith event years later, summarised the founding simply: Fatima Patel founded a South Asian newspaper in 2011 because representation matters, and communities trust it because its journalists are, as one contributor put it, like us.
Distribution and Digital Presence
Asian Standard is a free newspaper, distributed principally through pick-up points rather than home delivery rounds alone. The Leeds edition's distribution — major supermarkets, leading Asian stores and local businesses, every Monday, with home subscription also available — is typical of the model reported for the group. Earlier, Asian Sunday's Bradford distribution combined 10,000 household deliveries with 25,000 copies through supermarkets and offices, and its London edition combined household distribution with pick-up at more than twenty tube stations and in supermarkets and businesses.
Digitally, the group's centre of gravity moved to the Asian Sunday brand: a fully digital platform, website and social media presence, and the Asian Sunday TV YouTube channel, with programmes such as its Let's Talk chat show — whose first guest discussed a ground-breaking project on Muslim women in prison — and Simmering Sundays, a cookery club offering sessions, tips and budgeting advice. The print weekly and the digital Sunday brand therefore coexist, each carrying the group's community journalism in the format its audience uses.
Significance and Outlook
Asian Standard's significance is that it kept a free print newspaper for British Asian readers in production, and expanded it, during a period when most free local newspapers in England were closing. From Bradford in 2011 through Kirklees and the North East, to Leeds in 2021 with 32-page editions and new jobs created, and then to London, the group's trajectory ran against the industry trend — growth by regional editions, each localised, rather than consolidation into a single shared title.
The publisher's announced ambition was to launch further titles in additional cities by 2025, extending the model of a Bradford-born, family-run newspaper group serving South Asian communities across the United Kingdom. Whether read in print in a supermarket in Leeds, in a store in Kirklees, or alongside the Asian Sunday digital output, Asian Standard remains the print flagship of that project: a free weekly newspaper, published from Bradford by RF Publishing, that began with the proposition that a community should see its own stories in its own newspaper.
