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Compact relaunch for Highlands weekly after 110 years

A Highlands newspaper which has served some of Britain’s most remote communities for more than a century will go tabloid this week.

The weekly Strathspey and Badenoch Herald which covers Aviemore, Grantown-on-Spey and Kingussie in the south of the Highlands, will debut with a fresh new look on Thursday 10 May. The paper previously came out on a Wednesday.

As well as making the change from broadsheet, there will be a host of new content designed to get readers involved even more with ‘The Strathy’, as the paper is known locally.

The re-launch of the newspaper whose origins date back to 1902 is the latest investment to be made by Inverness-based owners Scottish Provincial Press.

Editor Gavin Musgrove said: “The new look Strathy will be a much more reader friendly newspaper.

“We will still be best for local news and sport but will have more views, photographs and features.

“It will be everything our readers have come to expect, and a little bit more, but better presented than ever before.”

An increase in pagination in recent years has created production issues with the 24-page broadsheet newspaper having to be published in two sections. That will soon be a thing of the past with a weekly offering of between 50 and 60 pages.

A mock up of how the paper will look

A new masthead and red and grey colour scheme are being used to give the paper a clean and modern look.

Also being introduced is Strathy People – a weekly photo spread of locals out and about; ‘7’ – a new entertainments guide; and a new sports column as well as new column writers and improvements to existing content.

The Strathy covers two distinct areas, Badenoch and Strathspey, and came about from the then Strathspey Herald’s owners acquiring the Badenoch Record in April 1964

It is consistently one of the strongest performers in the Scottish weekly newspaper market in year-on-year sales.

The newspaper, which has its main office in Grantown and a district office in Kingussie, has seen  just four editors and a news editor at its helm in more than 100 years.

Amongst the current columnists on the Strathy is Gordon Brown’s former spin doctor Charlie Whelan, who lives near Dulnain Bridge.

The SPP’s stable of 13 titles also includes the Inverness Courier, Highland News and the Elgin-based Northern Scot which have also benefitted from re-designs in the past 12 months.

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  • May 8, 2012 at 5:37 pm
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    Congratulations to The Strathy. It may have taken 110 years to realise the paper needed to be more reader friendly but, what the heck, they got there in the end!

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