In the summer of 2010, the Scarborough Evening News was still a daily paper, its journalists doing their best to provide a decent diet of news, features and interesting local information.

But as my Holdthefrontpage review ominously noted at the time, its average daily circulation of 11,359 made it “one of the tiniest sales figures in the UK” in what was the traditional ‘evening’ market.

“It can’t be easy,” I wrote, “running a small daily newspaper in 2010”, with the “shadows of declining circulations and narrowing profitability margins”.

Less than two years later, in May 2012, the title’s sale had dropped to just under 10,000, and owner Johnston Press converted it to weekly publication along with a number of its other titles.

And so today, a year on from going weekly, how does the relaunched paper, now called The Scarborough News, compare with what was the Scarborough Evening News?

Two-and-a-half years ago, the daily was selling at 45p a time, and the thin Wednesday paper I reviewed contained just 40 pages: 10 were news pages, another 13 pages were devoted to local theatre, music and arts coverage, and five were detailed sports pages.

On Thursday 28 February 2013, the weekly paper was selling for £1 (75p to regular subscribers), and for this it provided 128 pages – more than three times the volume of the daily.

This fatter package contained more than 300 stories on 60 news and features pages, plus a 20-page ‘The Guide’ pull-out for theatre, clubs, bars, eating out, cinema and listings, and 100 or more reports on 19 sports pages.

The comparison in terms of volume is David versus Goliath, and the value for money that Scarborough readers are getting more than a year down the line as a weekly is truly impressive.

The front page was a dramatised package based on the latest traffic warden assault figures, the resulting ‘Revenge on wardens’ splash a good one to attract the majority of readers who hate getting parking tickets.

Despite my wider concerns at Johnston Press redesigns, I thought this page one was well laid out, with a strong masthead, clear boosts and a readable splash write-off.

I’m still concerned at the information overload on page two that seems to overshadow all JP redesigns – essentially a template forcing multiple section write-offs that just don’t read well all lumped together.

But perhaps the redesigns have been tweaked, as the sickly colour washes seen on other JP titles were not present, and most inside pages seemed to be well-structured and easy to follow.

As for content, the remaining Scarborough hacks – six went as a result of it going weekly – are still making the paper a ‘must-read’ part of local life for the seaside town, these being just three examples of good news stories:

• ‘Savile’s civic honour revoked by council’ was the lead on page three, with the councillors who’d originally proposed the TV star as a freeman of Scarborough in 2007 all making long statements on how they’d never known about his “darker side”.
• ‘Bowling club member stole holiday fund’ led page five, reporting on a man’s suspended prison sentence for gambling nearly £11,000 of stolen cash.
• ‘Town’s “Billy the Busker” is jailed for three years’ led page 10, telling how a well-known eccentric had committed 105 offences since 1963, including burglary and assault.

Other eye-catching sections included ‘Court Report’ on page 41, detailing more than 20 convictions from Scarborough Magistrates; ‘District Diary’ on pages 81 to 84, carrying news reports from 17 local towns and villages; and ‘Crimes of the Century’ on page 92, highlighting a case of ‘foul-mouthed slander’ and the bankruptcy of a toffee-maker from 1913.

It was also interesting to see the Filey & Hunmanby Mercury, which was absorbed into the Scarborough paper a few years ago, still existing as a six-page section from page 85, with its own masthead.

In terms of sales, the old daily’s last recorded average was 9,914 between January and May 2012; as a weekly, its new average then became 14,806 between July and December 2012.

For some, this is seen as a near 50pc increase in circulation; others, of course, point out that comparing weekly versus daily sales is flawed.

Expect more controversy in the next ABCs, when critics will excitedly point at an expected big drop in the initial sales of the new weekly paper.

Whatever the detail, the new average will still show a disputed ‘rise’ on the last daily sale, with the weekly’s doubled cover price, steady advertising and vastly reduced costs taking what was a dying paper back into profitability and, therefore, survival.

Scarborough editor Ed Asquith, speaking defiantly at the Society of Editors Regional Conference last month, described the conversion as “inevitable”.

He said: “What was the realistic option? Wait until circulation was not viable for advertisers? Wait for a demise? …This is actually a positive story about newspaper sales, and commercially we have a stronger platform because it’s a superior product.”

Let’s just hope that Ed’s bosses at JP – led by chief executive Ashley Highfield – remain brave in the face of shareholders’ expectations, and stick with the high pagination and story counts that currently underpin the paper’s revived position as ‘The voice of Scarborough’.