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Daily newspaper launches separate edition for town

A regional daily is set to launch a separate edition to serve a town on its patch.

The Newsquest-owned Worcester News has announced that from next Thursday the town of Droitwich will be given its own edition of the paper.

The Droitwich News will feature up to eight change pages each day of news, sport, opinion and information services for people living in the town or surrounding area.

The new title’s masthead, pictured below, features a statue of St Richard, who was born close to the town in 1197.

Droitwich News masthead

A new reporter is being recruited to help with the edition, while some staff roles have also been changed at owner Newsquest’s centres in Stourbridge and Worcester in support of the venture.

The publication of its sister weekly the Droitwich Spa Advertiser will be unaffected by the move, and its website will remain as the company’s main online portal for news about the town.

However, a standalone Facebook page has been launched for the Droitwich News.

The launch coincides with the town’s annual Salt Festival which attracts over 10,000 visitors each year.

In an announcement on the Worcester News website, editor Peter John said staff were thrilled to be launching a new paper and looking forward to the challenge of providing a much improved local service for readers.

He added: “Droitwich is about a quarter of the size of Worcester and already has a sizeable core of Worcester News readers. Now we think we can offer them an even better local paper and attract new readers as well.”

The move by the regional publisher is the second new print launch in the space of a week.

Yesterday HTFP revealed that Local World has revived the Grimsby Target as a sister free to its paid-for daily the Grimsby Telegraph, eight years after the title was axed.

3 comments

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  • September 4, 2015 at 9:44 am
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    WEN did this with a slip edition years ago … what goes around comes around, I suppose. Pity it’ll probably be subbed in a galaxy far, far away by people who have no idea where the town is…

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  • September 4, 2015 at 7:38 pm
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    I think this will be the future for some JP papers serving towns where they no longer bother with offices or locally based reporters. A few slip pages in a main regional type rag with a remote reporter pool!

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  • September 4, 2015 at 8:50 pm
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    Great! Shame they keep sacking photographers left right and centre though. Poor photographers forced to reconsider careers. I hear Worcester and Stourbridge now have no staff photographers, before Christmas they had 7!! Such a shame!

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