The Wakefield Express has decided to ditch its broadsheet format after 155 years and go tabloid after its readers voted overwhelmingly in favour of the change.
The Johnston Press-owned weekly, which has a circulation of just under 34,000, will relaunch in the new format on 16 March. The front page will have an entirely new masthead which will incorporate Wakefield Cathedral. Some 93 per cent of readers who responded to a poll in the paper and on its website agreed with the change.
Editor Mark Bradley said: “We had a reasonably good suspicion that that they would say that.
“On the back of similar changes in the national press, fewer people are used to handling the broadsheet format. They wanted the change provided there was no dilution of the content.”
Though Bradley said there was “still a little way to go” to finalising details, there will not be a radical redesign of the paper itself — the new masthead being the principle change. The paper’s management are not planning to cut jobs as a result of the switch to tabloid.
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