Regional newspaper publisher Northcliffe Media has reduced the number of editions produced by a West Country weekly.
The Somerset based Western Gazette will lose one of its weekly editions, taking it from six to five.
The change will be in place from Thursday and will see the West Dorset and North Dorset editions of the newspaper merged into one.
The company says this will cover the whole of the region, including Sherborne and Dorchester, and will include 13 pages of dedicated news from the area.
The West Dorset edition previously only had one page of news for West Dorest, which was carried on the front page, while the rest of the paper covered North Dorset and Sherborne.
A Northcliffe spokesperson said: “Following extensive market research and a reader survey that showed that readers wanted more local news form their edition of the Western Gazette, the Gazette is undergoing some changes.”
The changes will also see extra an increase in ‘hyperlocal’ news pages in all five editions, with 66 in each newspaper instead of 54.
The spokesperson added: “The re-launch is a result of customer demand and a desire to improve the product and is not a cost cutting exercise.
“The changes will be in place from Thursday 15 September and will be supported by a promotional campaign and radio ads.”
Each edition of the newspaper has also been given a new look and what bosses are calling “better sign-posting.”
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Will anybody notice?
i think not
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This doesn’t sound quite like it’s been explained to concerned readers. It sounds like Northcliffe has cleverly spun pulling out of all areas of Dorset except Sherborne as “merging two editions”. No mention of redundancies here. Are we to take it there aren’t any or is that being covered up too?
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Publish if you dare…. For the information of the editor.. ‘North Dorset’ Covers Shaftesbury, Gillingham, Sturminster Newton, Stalbridge and Blandford and all the villages within it. Sherborne has always been classed as West Dorset. At a stroke you have deleted all news east of Sherborne, but still have the audacity to deliver copies of the ‘Sherborne’ edition to North Dorset outlets. people feel duped when they cannot find any mention of the area the paper has been delivered to. Shame on your company. I thought it was only to be sports coverage being lost (still a massive loss for sport minded among us) but the whole paper ????
I doubt I will read any reply to this comment, as it wont appear in any publication for my area in Shaftesbury..
Tim Beal (once a regular Western Gazette reader and contributor, but no more)
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Astonished to find a ‘Sherborne’ edition in my letterbox instead of North Dorset! No warning from the Western Gazette about cancelling the North Dorset edition. Can I have my money back?
Anyway, my subscription is cancelled as of today.
How can they say this is ‘customer demand’ and not cost-cutting? Tell the truth Gazette: how many people in North Dorset will now be deprived of your ‘hyperlocal’ news service?
Have you retained your reporter in our area or made another one redundant?
And I thought it was firms and the public who issued spin to the papers, not the other way around!
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