A soon-to-be-relaunched regional daily has given readers a first glimpse of what it is calling its “lighter, brighter look.”
As reported on HoldtheFrontPage last month, the Leeds-based Yorkshire Evening Post is undergoing a revamp with the new version due to hit the streets on 19 January.
The relaunch will coincide with the start of the Post’s Your Right To Know campaign, which aims to turn the spotlight on the way taxpayers’ cash is spent and how public services are delivered in Leeds.
The Johnston Press-owned title also plans to recruit a team of volunteer correspondents who will compile weekly columns filled with grassroots news about the places where they live.
A screenshot from the YEP’s website giving a glimpse of its new look
Guides to the city’s top shopping bargains and the lowdown on the best spots to eat and drink in Leeds will also be part of the new look paper.
Editor Jeremy Clifford said: “I am excited about the new look and the new package we have put together making the Yorkshire Evening Post a better newspaper than it has ever been.”
Readers were previously invited to join a panel to give their views on the new-look paper and were given a first glimpse in a story published on the paper’s website yesterday.
It read: “Our revamp aims to reflect the YEP’s position at the heart of 21st century Leeds, with the sample pages printed here showing the lighter, brighter look and feel planned for the new-style paper.”
YEP managing editor Nicola Furbisher added: “The Yorkshire Evening Post has always been and always will be rooted in the communities it serves.
“First and foremost we belong to our readers – and our commitment to getting to the heart of important matters on their behalf is as strong as it ever was.”
The YEP’s move comes at the start of its 125th anniversary year.
More details on the relaunch are set to be announced in the coming days.
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Recent sales figures have fallen very dramatically so I suspect this is the final roll of the dice to try to keep it daily; weekly publishing seems inevitable.
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Shame they didn’t proofread the head before putting it on the web.
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Does one turn one’s laptop sideways to read Traffic Watch. Barmy design.
Is heading grammatical? “Helps COPE” surely?
Volunteer reporters? Unpaid. Vanity publishing.
Other papers do this and it shows!!!
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Absolutely dreadful if this is supposed to be an advert for this relaunched publication. I can’t work out what the headline in the screenshot means. It looks as though someone has picked up a handful of words and thrown them onto the page. Or have two headlines been mixed up? Whoever was responsible for that needs to be hauled down the corridor (as we used to say in the Leeds bunker) and bawled out.
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Better than it’s ever been? I think not, Mr Clifford
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“…plans to recruit a team of volunteer correspondents…”
In other words, on the cheap. Nowt new there from JP then.
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Typical heading mistake by JP. Going off half-cocked with any new project as is usual with this company. Bring back the sub-editors.
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The wheel reinvented:
“The Johnston Press-owned title also plans to recruit a team of volunteer correspondents who will compile weekly columns filled with grassroots news about the places where they live.”
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What a howler with the heading on the front page but typical of the fodder issued by JP nowadays – and yet another JP employee ‘excited’ about a publication rehash.
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Another layby on the road to Hell. It looks cheap and horrible, as does so much local news now. Wouldn’t have happened in my day (the 18th century).
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What a joke. Not only should this proof with errors not have gone public, but neither should the YEP be asking the readers if the white rose should be retained in the masthead. Not only will the readers be taking the photos and sending in copy, but they are now designers! Management appears to be rushing through a new design, with little thought, the only aim being that they can shout NEW. The design, so far, looks like design for design’s sake and the speed of it seems a nonsense when the Chief Creative Officer has only been at JP for a couple of months. Why not ask him if he’d like a white rose in or not?
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Any positive comments? Cmon, just try….
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“The Johnston Press-owned title also plans to recruit a team of volunteer correspondents who will compile weekly columns filled with grassroots news about the places where they live.”
Anybody’d think this was a shiny new idea from JP! Only once upon a time district correspondents used to be paid a piddlin’ lineage rate, and even then it was hard to recruit good ones. I think we can guess what they’ll get for free…OAPs’ whist drives, anyone?
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Sorry. Nothing positive to say. Baffling heading, lousy design and boring picture. The man in charge needs to ask himself if he should pay a little more attention. JP relaunches are legendary for cock-ups. It has all become a bit pathetic, sorry to say. More pride in product needed, Edinburgh, and less company bullshit. No one is fooled. honestly.
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OK. Here goes End of World is High.
High quality editing Mr C. Congratulations and I am sure public will love it.
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Did I say High instead of Nigh? Blame predictive text or the subs!
I was so much excited about revamp I forgot myself.
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Can’t think of one positive judging by what’s on show here, Mr/Ms Nigh. Those “teams of volunteer correspondents” will have lost interest by mid-February and then what? We tried them a few years ago on my publication (The Idler) and they all quickly vanished back into the undergrowth. What would be your positive spin?
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It looks like one of those inDesign templates you create in 5 minutes on a YouTube tutorial
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How bad it that? Methinks the fat lady is in the wings warming up.
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I think a weekly would cringe at this effort. Maybe Mr C was off duty?
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‘If you love Leeds, you’ll love your new-look”. How does that work?
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All in favour of a new look and trying to pull in some younger readers and there’s definitely still a huge appetite for local news in Leeds.
Also good to see some genuine effort finally being put into a paper that has been quite brutally neglected and marginalised by previous editorial regimes.
Unfortunately the problem is going to be the same as it has been for the last few years though- there are simply no staff left to really make the relaunch all that it could be.
How can an editorial team that is now down to the absolute bare bones be expected to have the time or motivation to generate the kind of stories it will take to genuinely convince readers that the revamped product is worth paying for?
Credit where it’s due, at least the current editor and managing editor actually seem to have some passion for what they’re putting out, but their news team has been left so denuded, stressed and disillusioned by the cuts imposed by upper management that I fear it’s all smoke and mirrors.
However, I do wish everyone at the YEP the very best of luck with it- I know they work incredibly hard and often have little to show for it but ill-informed criticism from readers whose vitriol is misdirected and unfair.
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All these comments are great…I must have a go! I can’t think of anything witty to write, but I’ll just say that I have run out of swear words at the lunacy of it.
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I bet JP spent about £100k on this redesign.
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As a YEP sub who lost his job with so many other colleagues in the “exciting” days which centered on the introduction of Atex in November 2010, I feel for the staff who have been left to bear an ever increasing workload with a product with a rapidly decreasing readership. There is nothing “exciting” about an evening newspaper that is printed the day before the named publication date. There is nothing “exciting” about a big city daily that is not even printed in that city. And it is the same across the UK. We could put a man on the Moon in 1969, but in 2015 we cannot produce a regional evening newspaper containing today’s news.To use a couple of well-used quotes from the First World War, the hard-working present-day staff of the YEP may not be “lions led by donkeys” but they have been “shackled to a corpse.”
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Surely it’s an HTFP Friday Funny published a day early?
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Oh … and how much will the advertising for the redesign cost? At one time this would have all been created in-house by designers who knew the product and the area.
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A proud and vibrant city like Leeds deserves better than that.
Some more work to be done there…
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Doesn’t look very exciting, does it? Be honest, it is DULL.
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It will be interesting to see the front page
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