A group of former regional daily staffers who set up their own independent weekly last year have launched a second title 12 months on.
Hartlepool Life’s owners have announced the launch of East Durham Life, which is available in areas of County Durham to the north and west of the original title’s circulation area.
The new venture has seen the company take on a further three members of staff to cope with demand, including university journalism graduate Hayley Blakelock, who will concentrating solely on East Durham with support from existing Hartlepool Life editorial staff.
The East Durham title will have the same “positive news” stance as the Hartlepool weekly, with no crime or politics stories.
Hartlepool Life, which celebrated its first anniversary earlier this month, was launched by former Hartlepool Mail staffers – news editor Steve Hartley, picture editor Dirk Van Der Werff and newspaper sales manager Paul Healey – along with two business partners.
While Dirk admit that the paper got “slaughtered” for its good news stance in its early days, it has since taken on 18 people and is now distributed at 200 locations.
Steve, who serves as Hartlepool Life’s editorial director, wrote: “We believe a fantastic area such as East Durham, with its wonderful people and terrific heritage, deserves its own newspaper.
“Exciting events and developments are happening here every day which people just don’t hear about. East Durham Life is all about positive news with that special, all-warming, feel good factor.”
The 28-page full colour newspaper will also feature a round-up of all the area’s sporting action and reader competitions, as well as classified advertisements.
It is available for free at pick up points in Blackhall, Blackhall Rocks, Easington, Fishburn, Peterlee, Sedgefield, Shotton, Trimdons, Wheatley Hill and Wingate.
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Well done and best of luck.
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On the quiet, this is a very impressive achievement.
Well done to all involved.
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Great stuff, well done
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Compared to the blitzkrieg of bad tidings hat normally regale us here, this has made me smile.
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Great work especially as this is slap in the heartland of Hartlepool Mail and Northern Echo territory. Whilst not decrying the work done at those papers, it shows what can be done free from the shackles of corporations whose business acumen is limited to increasing profits by cutting costs. I’m not sure that they shouldn’t run selected crime and politics stories to offer readers even less of a reason to buy other papers though.
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Having following a similar path, hats off, well done, indie is the way forward for the British local press. Don’t be afraid to take the leap – lots of hard work. Just stick to community and campaigns and the rest will fall into place.
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Nice one all concerned!
Independent local publishing, community news or just the good news, is clearly we’re its at, you’d think the old dinosaur publishers would take note of how well papers can be run and follow suit but I guess when you’re on a runaway roller coaster it’s hard to change direction or get off.
Wishing continued success to you all
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This patch hasn’t been in either the Mail or the Echo’s heartland territory for a long time ElectricPics so this move has to be welcomed. Hopefully in time they will consider doing some harder news coverage too.
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For the thousandth time today: there’s no demand for it (copyright all major regional publishers).
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