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Weekly shrinks in size after more than a century

The Clitheroe Advertiser and Times has been making its own news in the Ribble Valley, undergoing a “small” change.

After more than a century as a broadsheet, the weekly newspaper has changed to a new compact tabloid format.

The new-look Advertiser and Times was unveiled to readers on Thursday, and early responses to the new format are that it is “much easier to handle” and “very readable”.


  • The new ‘compact’ paper
  • The change follows a similar transformation of its sister titles the Burnley Express and Nelson Leader a year ago, and readers were presented with a dummy issue as part of a comprehensive survey before work on the new size began.

    Editor Vivien Meath said: “Of those who were interviewed, 77 per cent said that they preferred the smaller paper, which took us by surprise.

    “Before that we’d had no requests for the change and readers seemed happy with the paper, but after the results of our research we decided to go for it.”

    The paper’s old broadsheet style had also presented problems with colour, and thanks to the new format it can offer readers and advertisers a much brighter product with almost half of its 80 pages in colour.

    Vivien said: “Colour advertising had been a problem and we wanted to accomodate the demand. We can now offer lots of colour in our property supplement and this has been welcomed by eastate agents.”

    But despite the new size, much of the content of the paper remains the same, with favourites such as village news still featured.

    Vivien said: “We tried to keep much of the paper as it was because our readers were also very definite about what they didn’t want.

    “They were very keen to give thier views and really feel that it is their paper.”

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