Northcliffe switches third regional daily to weekly edition

The Exeter Express and Echo has become the latest Northcliffe regional title to be switched to a weekly.

The final edition daily edition of the newspaper, which was first printed in 1904, will be published on Friday 2 September, with the first 200-page weekly edition appearing the following week.

Northcliffe said in a statement that the decision had been made "in response to significant changes in the marketplace and readers’ lives".

The weekly shift for the Exeter and Echo follows similar moves in July at the Scunthorpe Telegraph and Herald Express in Torquay.

The company has not said how many jobs will be cut in Exeter, but there were 16 redundancies – half the editorial workforce – when the Herald Express made the switch. Staff at the Scunthorpe Telegraph are still waiting to hear how many redundancies the titles faces.
 
Steve Auckland, managing director of Northcliffe Media, said: "We need to adapt to changes in the market in order to survive and prosper. The plans for the new edition of the Express & Echo look excellent and I am confident we can offer both readers and advertisers added value."
 
Editor Marc Astley said Exeter was a "much different city from the one that first embraced the Express and Echo in 1904".

"The population has become increasingly diverse with many of our readers now leading ever-busier lifestyles. It is clear to us that they value local news and their local newspaper but the majority of them simply do not have the time to buy it every day.

"We therefore feel that a weekly title would be much better aligned with the needs of our customers."
 
Northcliffe announced last week that advertising performance was up 19 per cent and circulation twice as high as recent figures for the first weekly edition of the Torquay Herald Express, which was heavily promoted by the company.

There is speculation that another Northcliffe title, the Lincolnshire Echo, may also be set for a weekly move, although nobody could be reached at the company for comment.

The editor of the Echo, Jon Grubb, left suddenly in July after five and a half years with the title. A statement sent to staff of the company said that Grubb was leaving to "pursue other business interests".

The Echo has an editorial staff of around 25. According to the most recent ABC figures, it has an average circulation of 17,667.

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