Isle of Man Examiner to go tabloid; but when will it get its own website?
The Isle of Man Examiner has announced it is to go tabloid. The Johnston Press owned weekly, was launched 131 years ago, but in recent times sales have been waning – according to the latest ABC figures its circulation was down 4.9% to 11,160.
Although the size of the pages will be cut in half, the newspaper's pagination will double, the paper says, repeating the points made by other publishers who have gone down this path over the last 20 years or so.
But editor Richard Butt says the move will be enough to reinvigorate the title, and re-enthuse the readers. They “wanted our the Examiner to change, we couldn't ignore that,” he said.
As well as the new format the paper, after a process which saw the team 'think long and hard' also sports new layouts and features; perhaps predictable as fitting a broadsheet layout on to a tabloid format was always going to be a challenge.
Maybe the next innovation for the title might be setting up its own website. At the moment the title shares its online presence with its two other Isle of Man Johnston stablemates – the Courier and Independent.