A weekly newspaper is to run counter to the modern trend by switching from tabloid to broadsheet format, report HoldTheFrontPage and Press Gazette.
The revamped Eastbourne Gazette will appear “very soon”, according to a message to readers by its editor-in-chief Gary Shipton.
The title will also feature a new masthead that looks like a throwback to the 19th century, the Gazette having been founded in 1859.
Shipton wrote: “We are relaunching the Gazette as a premier, quality weekly broadsheet title... This decision was reached after listening to what you the reader said you wanted.”
Really? The people of Eastbourne were crying out for a broadsheet? I doubt that while applauding the boldness of the initiative.
It will ensure that the Gazette, which is published on a Tuesday, is very different from its sister Johnston Press title, the Eastbourne Herald, which appears in shops on Fridays. (I can’t tell you their sales figures because they are not audited by ABC).
I wonder if the decision has anything to do with rumours that Newsquest/Gannett is about to launch a new title in the town, the Eastbourne Independent, later this month.
Something of an old-fashioned press war has opened up between Johnston Press and Newsquest on the south coast since JP acquired the Brighton & Hove Independent in July, thereby offering competition to Newsquest’s Brighton Argus.
The Eastbourne Herald greeted its owner’s acquisition by remarking that its advertisers would “now have the opportunity to reach potential customers in Brighton and Hove.”
So, with a Johnston Press tank on its Brighton lawn, Newsquest clearly thinks it needs to place its own tank on the Eastbourne lawn. To that end, it has already launched an Eastbourne Independent website.
That kind of newspaper competition is even more of a return to the past than the Gazette’s broadsheet move. And there’s nothing wrong with that, of course. Readers and advertisers (and journalists, hopefully) are the likely beneficiaries.
Sources: HoldTheFrontPage/Press Gazette/The Guardian/Eastbourne Gazette/Eastbourne Herald/Eastbourne Independent
