by holdthefrontpage staff
The Royston Crow has undergone an extensive redesign to bring readers a new look, feel and content.
The relaunch was the culmination of eight months of work for editor Les Baker and the Crow Forum - a team of staff from all departments at the Archant Anglia title.
The Crow has been established for almost 150 years and is the local newspaper for Royston, Baldock, Buntingford and the area south of Cambridge. Its circulation includes parts of North Hertfordshire, South Cambridgeshire and East Hertfordshire.
The discussion forum was set up earlier this year by Mike Almond, managing editor, Herts & Essex at Archant Anglia, to look at ways of solving the slide in Crow newspaper sales, to ensure content built future sales and to provide a platform for the title's advertising sales team to build revenue on.
Key features of the weekly's new look are:
The in-your-face white-on-red masthead has been replaced with a refined black on white version. The town name Royston has been re-introduced.The story count has been increased: week one - last week - saw 20 per cent more stories than average.The leisure section had been revamped under a Life theme.Les said: "We wanted to give the paper a softer look. We want to talk to our readers rather than shout at them.
"And we wanted to ensure that we reflected the lives of our readers through our pages - the section couldn't really be called anything else but Life."
The relaunch is supported by the major retailers in the area, including supermarkets, plus a targeted promotion campaign.
Mike Almond added: "The huge effort already put in by so many people to make this happen has really made Royston an exciting place to be working in at the moment."
Do you have a story about the regional press? Ring 0116 227 3122/3121, or
e-mail pastill@nep.co.uk
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