The Bath Chronicle – moving from weakly to weekly?

Today marks the end of an era for The Bath Chronicle which published its last daily paper before reverting to a weekly newspaper next week.

I say reverting because it was launched as a weekly paper in 1760 and only became a daily paper in 1877.

When I worked on the paper 15 years ago its circulation was around the 30,000 mark but that has fallen over the years to just 12,363.

Personally I didn’t enjoy my time working on the paper which at the time was going through a difficult period.

Since moving back to Bath 11 years ago, the Chron as it is known in the city has not been a must read for me and I have only bought it occasionally or flicked through it at work.

Its decision to go from a daily to a weekly has been viewed as historical because it is the first newspaper to head in this direction.

According to the letters page and the comments on the Chron’s website, the decision has not been received very favourably but I suspect it is the future for many local evening newspapers as both the internet and free papers such as Metro continue to grow.

A city the size of Bath should be able to support a good, well written weekly newspaper - I hope it is good and that it is not simply the daily paper compressed into one weekly issue.