A regional daily has announced it is dropping the word ‘evening’ from its name as part of a planned New Year relaunch.
The Lancashire Evening Post has tweeted a picture of a new masthead bearing just the words ‘Lancashire Post’.
The Preston-based title’s new masthead also features a red rose, a traditional symbol of Lancashire.
The name change, which will take effect in January, has already been promoted on social media, although no other details of the planned relaunch have yet been made public.
A post on the paper’s Facebook and Twitter pages, accompanied by a pictured of the new masthead, reads: “Look out for your new Lancashire Post, coming January 2017.”
The Post, which like most former evening papers is now printed overnight, declined to comment further when approached by HTFP.
On Facebook, reader Mark Hall said of the change: “About time too. It’s only taken 10 years to realise that you no longer distribute this paper in the evening.”
The red rose came to be seen as an emblem of Lancashire after it served as a symbol of the House of Lancaster during the Wars of the Roses.
In Jaunary 2015, the Yorkshire Evening Post announced it would be keeping its county’s white rose, itself taken from the medieval House of York, on its masthead after a survey of readers found overwhelming support for the emblem.
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This is such a silly idea. A major strength of local newspapers is in the history of the brand. Everyone in Preston and beyond knows the paper as the LEP. Why, oh why, would you abandon that? People haven’t cared what time it’s published for years. The same as they don’t care that Preston North End hasn’t ‘needed’ the North in its name for 120 years, or that they’re not going to see a little old Italian fella behind the counter at Brucciani’s anymore.
The paper at which I work also formally dropped the ‘Evening’ from its masthead six years ago. Local people, with no exceptions, still use exactly the same acronym, including the ‘E’ for Evening. The staff even use the old name. It’s not surprising really, given JP put zero (and I mean zero) cash into the rebrand which means all the local paper shops, a-boards, point of sales and even the offices still carry the old title.
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Desperate times, desperate measures.
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Confirmation that they are at best giving the readers, yesterday’s news – tomorrow
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Sadly those papers who dropped “evening” for “next morning” have also dropped sales because the news is so stale. That would not have mattered if they could replace it with more in-depth material, but they do not have enough staff to do that. Too busy just filling spaces.
I think for some of these papers going weekly will be their next step in 2017. Such a shame as they were once massively popular (I mean 100,000 plus a DAY).
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At the risk of being a tad controversial…
Given the current state of the industry and the fact that many readers, business and organisations feel let down by their once trusted local newspaper, isn’t about time that most regionals were completely rebranded and turned into something more modern?
I mean a complete move away from the XYZ Post or the ABC Gazette – a total relaunch as 21st Century news providers.
Of course, this may be a complete disaster for some titles but I genuinely feel that, in some areas, the respect which the local newspaper once had has been lost for good.
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Oliver. You might be right. Leave the immediate news to the website. Use the paper for investigative feature-led material. The snag? You requite a good number of experienced hacks for quality writing.
Most have left or been sacked or are busy……feeding the web.
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