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Ten-year-old designs paper's 150th birthday logo

A daily newspaper which marks its 150th anniversary this year is looking to young people to help celebrate the milestone.

The Kent Messenger ran a competition last year inviting children to design a logo to commemorate the birthday.

The winner was 10-year-old Emma Llewellyn whose idea of people relaxing while reading, listening and logging into the KM various media caught the judges’ eye.

Her design, pictured below, is being used on the front page each week and will accompany all anniversary activity throughout the year. She won a trip to Cadbury World for her family plus spending money.

Editor Bob Bounds said: “We were really impressed by the number and quality of entries. There’s a tremendous amount of talent out there which made the final decision very difficult.

“Emma’s idea will be very much at the forefront of our 150 branding.”

The KM is keen to engage with its younger readers and has had talks with a local youth theatre group to put on a production to mark the anniversary as well as putting on a museum display aimed specifically at schoolchildren.

Added Bob: “There’s going to be a lot of nostalgia coverage in the paper over the next 12 months which will really appeal to our older readers but we also want to involve all the generations.”

The Queen has sent a letter of congratulations to the paper and messages have also been received from local MPs Sir John Stanley, Hugh Robertson and Ann Widdecombe.

Ms Widdecombe said: “A local paper is as essential to its community as water to a plant. I could not have managed without the KM for the last 21 years.”

Next week the paper prints a special souvenir copy of its very first front page.

Comments

Kelvin (14/01/2009 08:24:40)
Certainly beats paying a decent living wage to the designers.
Maybe they could start using ten-year-old reporters to.

Dan Depan (14/01/2009 09:18:36)
Only fair really as his contempories have been making most of the staffing and planning decisions for years.

John (14/01/2009 16:16:53)
They should just let 10 year olds run newspapers. They’ll be overjoyed with 13k a year. Nice bit of pocket money

ExExpress (15/01/2009 22:32:14)
Oh you miserable sods. The KM is doing the right thing – keeping in touch with the people on the patch. People still want a local newspaper but if it is filled with press releases topped by crappy headlines written by ‘under pressure’ sub-editors, then readers won’t buy. If readers feel the newspaper is talking to them – great. So well done Bob.