An East of England daily has dropped its price and launched a new-look paper this week as part of sweeping changes aimed at securing new readers and advertising.

The Ipswich-based Evening Star now costs 40p, down from 47p, from Monday to Thursday and on Saturdays.

Meanwhile, Friday’s edition will now be a much larger bumper package, costing 80p and featuring all the major commercial supplements such as jobs, motors and property, across more than 110 pages, as well as the traditional look ahead to the weekend.

Other changes include new fonts and page templates and a new printing model – Friday, Saturday and Monday editions will be published overnight while the other three will remain same-day, ‘live’ editions.

Readers of the Archant Suffolk title will also benefit from a daily page devoted solely to ‘Star Savers’, featuring a host of 2-for-1 vouchers and giveaways while advertising staff have new ad shapes to work with.

Evening Star editor Nigel Pickover told HTFP: “The relaunch has gone down very well and we’ve been getting some good comments from the public but the true test will be the sales figures.

“We’ve gone for a very radical route with the industry looking at what we’re doing.

“The Friday edition is a full weekend read which we’re hoping will be runaway success. It has been a lengthy process up to the launch.

“We recognise that the increases in prices has taken us the point where readers are more inclined to be casual buyers than having it home delivered.

“We’re hoping to attract a younger audience without alienating our 50-plus readers.

“A lot of people in the industry have been looking for the holy grail – we don’t want to say this is but it’s a clever attempt in gaining a new audience.”

Comments

Onlooker (29/09/2009 10:21:17)
Good luck with this at The Star but I don’t think young people are suddenly going to start buying local newspapers again. They are currently bombarded with the written word from so many different angles that they are suffering overload. All the local gossip they want is on Facebook/MySpace etc while showbiz updates are just an email or text away. In fact, with the advent of online ‘citizen journalism’, blogs, personal websites etc, younger people know they can get their views out without speaking to some crabby, overworked professional journalist who might not write what they wanted or were expecting.

Alan Salter (29/09/2009 10:23:39)
At last. I wish you all well. It’s great to see a newspaper not rolling over and simply sacking journalists.

Erm… (29/09/2009 11:24:33)
The Ipswich Star has sacked a lot of journalists and is practically run on a shoestring.