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Dyson at Large: The longest newspaper title in Britain

It’s got five words and 36 characters, and it takes up two-and-a-bit lines in the masthead.

That makes the Dunoon Observer and Argyllshire Standard the longest newspaper title in Britain.

The look and feel of this weekly paper is one of the most rudimentary I’ve ever seen: its layout is what can only be described as ‘block-style’, and 16 of its 28 pages are printed in black and white.

But I reckon it’s read by nearly every family in Dunoon, the remote town sitting on the banks of the Firth of Clyde, on the Cowal Peninsula in Argyll and Bute, Scotland.Dunoon paper

On Friday 4 September, the paper crammed in more than a dozen reports and 60 pictures from the town’s internationally renowned Cowal Highland Gathering, described by organisers as the “biggest, most spectacular” Highland games in the world.

The three-day event saw the Standard recording battles for the best caber tossers, Highland dancers, pipers and drummers, as well as comprehensive results for other strange-but-true competitions such as ‘heavy athletics’ and Scottish ‘backhold wrestling’.

Although the town’s big event of the year filled at least 12 pages, the Standard still carried more than 100 other news, features and sports reports elsewhere. Detailed news stories included:

  • the latest on the collapse of a Dunoon building firm, which saw the loss of 60 local jobs;
  • a report on the failed community buy-out of a local castle, criticised as  an “unedifying adversarial and confrontational denouement” by one councillor;
  • an analysis of why a fatal road accident closed a main road for six hours, described as “a perfect conspiracy” by a police chief; and
  • detailed court reports on how two local drink-drivers were banned from the roads.

There were other reports on new road resurfacing plans, broadband improvements, land ownership campaign meetings and ‘constructive truancy’ – all subjects that you can imagine had tongues wagging in a town of fewer than 8,500 people.

The Standard is published by E & R Inglis Ltd, a Dunoon design and print company still owned by descendants of William Inglis Senior, who launched the newspaper back in 1871.

In the 144 years since then, the paper’s only had 11 editors, the current incumbent being Gordon Neish, who runs operations with three other journalists and a part-time photographer.

When last audited by ABC in 2002, the paper was selling 6,044 copies a week at 50p a time. The cover price is now 80p, with an average sale of around 4,300 according to staff – still pretty decent in a town of less than 8,500 people.

If accurate, the latest sales figure suggests an average sales drop of between 2pc and 3pc a year for the last decade or so, which would not compare badly to the industry average.

This is probably down to a mixture of Dunoon’s far-flung location, its dodgy internet connections and – when you can go online – the paper’s pretty clunky, hard-to-use and unattractive website, www.dunoon-observer.com (now there’s an idea!).

Pedant’s footnote: The Dunoon Observer and Argyllshire Standard was once arguably challenged as the Britain’s longest newspaper title by the now-defunct Wellingborough and Rushden Herald and Post.

However, because the Herald & Post used the ampersand on its actual masthead, it was reduced to 35 characters, making the Dunoon title’s 36 characters the longest as far as proud Scots were concerned.

And today it still holds that tongue-twisting title, with the Oswestry and Border Counties Advertizer coming a close second with 35 characters.

12 comments

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  • October 7, 2015 at 9:21 am
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    Pah! A mere five words five words and 36 characters. Not a patch on the short-lived Ilkley, Wharfedale & Airedale Gazette & Observer (seven words, 42 characters) http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2011/news/two-broadsheet-titles-merge-to-form-tabloid/ – remarkably a title conceived not in 1850, but in 2011!

    I’d also be willing to bet that the title above isn’t the longest in Britain, even now it has seen off competition from the GOB.

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  • October 7, 2015 at 9:31 am
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    … found one! The Longridge & Ribble Valley News & Advertiser (seven words and 37 characters) – anyone top that?

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  • October 7, 2015 at 10:44 am
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    Dunoon, the remote town …? Not so remote to the newspaper’s readers I would have thought. Or to anyone in Scotland for that matter.

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  • October 7, 2015 at 11:43 am
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    Independently owned, well-read, full of local news, more concerned with substance than style – oh, I’m getting so nostalgic. Long may such a paper survive and please, family owners, find any way you can to keep going in the long term than selling out to a big group.

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  • October 7, 2015 at 11:49 am
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    It’s a strange page size – Steve, is it tabloid or broadsheet? What is it like in comparison to a national title?

    Weird layout, dull fonts but at the same time incredibly local and obviously community minded and knows its community very well.

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  • October 7, 2015 at 1:32 pm
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    Oo – contenders! Great stuff, thanks.

    Your Ilkley entrant would certainly have scooped the title, ‘Number cruncher’, if it was still going. Defunct titles are disqualified though.

    But The Longridge & Ribble Valley News and Advertiser (one ampersand, one fully spelled) is the definite winner, at what I count as seven words and 42 characters. That is as long as this is how it appears in the masthead – them’s the rules in this trainpotting-style competition. Please confirm, someone…

    As for ‘Sub up North’ and his or her Cumberland and Westmorland Herald, no, no, no – just 30 characters, I’m afraid.

    Meanwhile, thanks for the JICREG link from ‘slade the leveller’ – and a 70pc penetration rate ain’t too bad these days.

    And finally, in answer to ‘Oor Wullie’s Pail’, it’s an outsized tabloid. About an inch wider and two inches longer than the average tabloid. But not a Berliner.

    Thanks for all the feedback… and if anyone can beat the Longridge & Ribble title (in the masthead itself remember) the title’s still up for grabs.

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  • October 14, 2015 at 8:27 pm
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    As current editor of the Dunoon Observer and Argyllshire Standard I am delighted that our community-led publication is being discussed on such a prestigious industry site.
    I am, however, quite upset that our short-lived glory appears to have transferred to the Ribble Valley.
    Until, I believe, 1996, our full and glorious title was Dunoon Observer and Argyllshire Standard (incorporating the Dunoon Advertiser and Cowal Watchman).
    The masthead left little space for front page news…

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  • October 21, 2015 at 11:41 pm
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    “The cover price is now 80p, with an average sale of around 4,300 according to staff – still pretty decent in a town of less than 8,500 people.”

    — I think you’ll find that should be “…a town of fewer than 8,500 people.”

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  • October 22, 2015 at 11:02 am
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    Right OK.
    Here we go…
    I am the News Reporter for..

    ‘The Forest of Dean and Wye Valley Review, incorporating the Ross Trading Post and The Forest Weekly News’

    18 words, 82 letters

    Beat that!

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  • October 22, 2015 at 12:52 pm
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    Tim Oakes: if that full title is displayed on your masthead then you are, officially, crowned as the ‘Longest Newspaper Title in Britain’. Can you email me the front page for verification? (!)

    And as for ‘Pedant': good pedantry, Sir!

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