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November 26, 2019updated 30 Sep 2022 8:39am

Reach closes last newsroom in Cornwall with some staff moved to hub in Devon

By Freddy Mayhew

Reach is closing two offices in the South West, including its last newsroom in Cornwall, with journalists to work remotely or hot desk in shared working spaces while others are moved to a hub in Plymouth.

No jobs will be lost as a result of the closure of the Truro and Exeter offices, Press Gazette understands, while two new senior editorial roles will be created in Plymouth, which is about 50 miles from both cities.

Reach owns three paid-for weekly titles covering Cornwall: The West Briton (which sells 12,551 copies), the Cornish Guardian (8,881) and The Cornishman (6,795) as well as regional news website Cornwall Live.

In Devon Reach owns weeklies the North Devon Journal (10,586), Mid Devon Gazette (5,214), Exeter Express and Echo (10,214) and the Torquay Herald Express (12,031), as well as Devon Live.

It also owns dailies the Western Morning News (15,295), which covers Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, and the Plymouth Herald (11,479).

All above circulation figures are the latest available from ABC.

Devon Live has 3.5m monthly unique browsers and nearly 14m monthly page views while Cornwall Live has 3.2m monthly unique browsers and 9.8m monthly page views (Google Analytics figures for April to June 2019).

Reach declined to comment for this article.

The Mirror, Express and Star publisher also owns the Manchester Evening News and Liverpool Echo, as well as a number of other regional daily and weekly newspapers across the UK.

Reach recently announced plans to launch up to seven new regional websites in Yorkshire and the North East and hire 46 journalists in what it described as a “significant expansion” of its digital network.

It has also claimed to be the first UK news publisher to cross 40m unique visitors in a single month, according to new Comscore web figures.

It is currently advertising for a regional content editor covering Cornwall Live, Devon Live and Plymouth Live, which it said together reach more than 10m people a month and generate some 40m page views a month.

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