As it is a word that has connotations of freedom, it is not surprising that the word liberty appears in the title of one of Ireland's free newspapers.

The slogan of the newspaper is "Take The Liberty - it's free" and the freesheet takes its name from the area it serves: the Liberties, in Dublin's south inner city.

It is different to most free newspapers in the country. It has a small print run, it has no advertising, its journalists do not get paid and it only appears every month or two during the academic year. The reason for this is it is funded by the Dublin Institute of Technology and has been an ongoing project for its second and third year journalism students since 1998.

Some 2,000 copies of each edition of The Liberty are distributed by students in hairdressers, pubs, newsagents and community associations throughout the newspaper's south inner-city catchment area.

According to journalist Eoghan Corry, who oversees the project, the lack of advertising "leaves it completely free of any advertising pressures." As a result, the newspaper has done a few exposes over the years and has broken many stories, some of which were then taken up by national newspapers.

Second-year student and current editor of The Liberty, Colin McGann, says that it is as well to stay away from advertising. As the newspaper has always been low budget, he feels that bringing advertising into the equation now might only change the angle of the stories. In the eyes of news editor Aisling Casey, it is "definitely better without advertising. It would take from the articles we write."

One of the challenges the staff of The Liberty have met is that none of them are from the area. As McGann puts it, they are producing a newspaper for people who know more about what's going on than the writers do.

Despite this, "feedback from the community is surprisingly good," says Corry - and the newspaper's success is not measured through phonecalls or letters, but through word of mouth.

Even the recognition of the name of the newspaper in the community when journalists are doing stories is proof enough of the impact it has had on the area. When distributing the last issue, McGann says that people thought that the newspaper had stopped as they hadn't seen it in a while.

"From delivering, you can see people come looking for you, they're waiting for it," he says.