Correspondent Tabloid Relaunch Report

The Sunday Correspondent relaunched yesterday as the UK’s first quality tabloid in a format consisting of two sections plus a magazine. As promised the editorial style remained almost unchanged with the main section consisting of news, opinions, analysis, a review of the week, a 6-page business section and 14-pages of sport. The 60-paged main section carried 9 full-page advertisements including British Nuclear Fuels, Virgin Atlantic, Vauxhall and Nat West. The second section, simply called Sunday Correspondent 2, began with a feature on letters written to Mikhail Gorbachev and moved on to include arts, fashion, science and society, food and drink, a personal finance section MoneySense, travel, motoring and 6-pages of TV and radio. Of the 52- pages in the second section, 5 were given over to full-page ads including Girobank, Sun Alliance and Phillips.

Yesterday the Times also presented a new look to their Sunday paper with the tabloid Review section, a combination of the old broadsheet arts section and the tabloid book section. Peter Bowman of WCRS/Esprit Media, commenting on the new look Correspondent, said he was “unconvinced that the newspaper will gain anything from the change; my worst fears were confirmed by what I saw.” He feels that the majority of readers will regard the change as a move towards the downmarket sector. Bowman said he loved the Correspondent when it was first launched as a broad- sheet, but sees the tabloid version as a less attractive format for advertisers. His personal reaction to the tabloid was ‘dreadful’ but professionally he would like to see the Correspondent prove that the new look can save the paper.

Hugh Lindsay, Press Coordinator for Ogilvy and Mather, gave a favourable opinion of the new look paper, he thought it “very good” with a “clear concise layout.” Lindsay said he saw nothing wrong with the broadsheet Correspondent, although he personally prefers the tabloid as it does not intimidate by having several articles crowded on one page. He sees the key issue to its success being whether or not the British public will find the Correspondent more palatable in tabloid format. However Lindsay did say that he thought success would be “an uphill battle.”

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