The first compact edition of the Press and Journal has been welcomed with almost unanimous approval from readers, according to editor Derek Tucker.

Publishers of the Aberdeen-based broadsheet daily unveiled the first issue of the new-look paper on Saturday.

It is part of a trial which will see a compact edition available for sale each weekend, before a decision is made on whether to make the change permanently.

Derek said: “We’re very pleased. We set up a special hotline so that readers could express their views on the day and received hundreds of calls, of which about 95 per cent were positive.”

The editor also said the change had boosted sales, with early indications showing an increase of between 7,000 and 10,000, on top of the average 85,000 copies usually sold on a Saturday.

But despite such a positive response, Derek said it was too early to say if the compact edition would become a permanent fixture on a Saturday, adding that plans for a weekday compact edition were “not even on the radar”.

He said: “Obviously on the first day there is a lot of novelty purchase. But we hope and think that readers like what they see.”

The next step in the experiment will be a reader survey on the change, with a questionnaire published in-paper in the third and fourth edition of the Saturday compact.

Derek said: “We will study the results of this and also monitor the sales trend before we make a decision, and would say this is at least two months away.”

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