Today we are delighted to unveil a new look to The Press and Journal and unveil a brand new food and drink magazine, The Menu.
The most striking change is to our world famous masthead and front page. In keeping with the affectionate name used by all our readers, we have decided to introduce a P&J masthead.
This new design will give us more flexibility in how the front page is designed and give us more opportunities to project the wealth of content available to readers every day.
It is a bold move but The Press and Journal, like all communities in the north and north east of Scotland, must continually evolve and adapt to the modern world by trying new things.
We have also introduced some subtle design changes inside the paper which will help us to package stories giving you extra content including greater use of sidebars, analysis and graphics. The new layout will also enable us to better display our award-winning pictures.
New today is a central comment section, Agenda, to allow more room for letters as well as introducing a second daily column. On a Saturday this will be a new weekly diary slot called the Leopard Spots. Over the next couple of months we will be introducing a range of new columnists with strong voices on both local and national issues.
In business we have redesigned our stocks and shares listings into one single page to make it easier for readers to follow their investments.
We have moved weather from page four to further back in the paper in the farming section. For those who want a quick summary, however, there will be a brief forecast in the page 2 index.
Readers have often told us how much they value family announcements and we have decided to give them their own daily section which will now also feature obituaries of well-known local, national and international figures.
We have also responded to reader demand by introducing an extra half page of puzzles every day.
I hope you enjoy the changes we have made and I would be delighted to know what you think, particularly about the front page. As I mentioned in Thursday and Friday’s papers, we are, unfortunately, putting the price of the Saturday edition up to £1.40 and midweek up to £1.20.
As I said, we are working in an increasingly challenging market for newspapers and our costs have risen significantly in the last 12 months. Faced with a choice of cutting content or raising price and continuing to invest in the title, we chose the latter. We still believe the P&J represents very good value for money in a world where a cup of coffee is normally twice the price of this newspaper.
Please let us know what you think of the new look P&J.
