Reach wields district axe

Coventry Telegraph

Two district editions of the daily Coventry Telegraph have been scrapped by Reach plc, the UK’s largest regional news publisher, in a move which leave a town without a dedicated daily title for the first time since 1895.

Both the Nuneaton and Warwickshire editions have ceased publication in order to “simplify” the newspaper’s structure.

However, Reach has pledged to continue publishing news from both Nuneaton and wider Warwickshire in the remaining Coventry edition of the paper.

Latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that Telegraph sales have slumped from 7,218 to 6,183.

The Telegraph’s masthead now advertises “all the latest news from Coventry, Nuneaton and Warwickshire”.

Media website Hold The Front Page said that a Reach spokesman had reported: “While we have simplified the edition structure of the Telegraph series, all the news from Nuneaton and Warwickshire will continue to be published in the main edition and we have redesigned the masthead to signal to readers from across the patch that the Telegraph is the place to go for their daily fix of local news and sport.”

Nuneaton had previously had a dedicated daily title since the foundation of the now-defunct Nuneaton Evening Tribune in 1895. When it went weekly in 1992, the Heartland Evening News was launched as a new daily title, being renamed the Nuneaton News in 2009.

The latest move marks a departure from a recent strategy by Reach of launching or reviving district editions on some of its regional dailies.