A monthly magazine is being relaunched as a free fortnightly newspaper with a team of former regional daily journalists, including former Bournemouth Daily Echo editor-in-chief Neal Butterworth.

The first issue of the Seeker News will hit the stands on May 3, with an initial copy run of 10,000 newspapers printed every two weeks.

Editor Steve Cook said the market in Bournemouth was “saturated” with magazines, and it made it difficult for his newsy publication to compete with the other high-advert, low-editorial products on the shelves – and said there was a demand for more newsy content.

So he decided to relaunch as a newspaper, the first issue of which is pictured below.

“We have a very newsy outlook, as a lot of our staff come from a daily paper background. We wanted to do more news and sport, so it made sense both in terms of what we wanted it to be and economically as well,” he said.

“It means we can do more up-to-date news stories and go out more frequently.”

Along with Neal, the team includes former Echo deputy head of features Nick Churchill, ex-Dorset Echo sports editor Paul Baker, film writer Anwar Brett and photographer Siân Court.

“There is definitely a market for it here. Too many people are too keen to write newspapers off, but we’re not done yet,” Steve said.

“We want to be a paper with a positive outlook – not twee or glib, but giving people reason to be proud of where they live.”

The Seeker News will be distributed through supermarkets, leisure centres, hotels, cafés and hospitals in Bournemouth and Poole.

Steve said the announcement had been greeted positively by people in the area.

“We will support local businesses, triumph the area’s many good causes and continue to offer the same great mix of news, sport, arts and lifestyle stories and features readers have come to expect from us,” he added.

“Our readers and advertisers are really excited by the prospect of the newspaper and have been eagerly circulating dummy issues. There’s a lot of goodwill and bags of positive energy behind this launch.”