Editorial: Remember this is your newspaper

I would like to thank our readers for the positive feedback to the launch of our new-look compact paper.

Last week, after months of planning, we moved from a broadsheet to an easy-to-read compact newspaper. We are still getting emails from readers who say they love the new look. People have also noticed that we have changed our content and the way we present it.

As promised, there is more local content and we are trying to focus on the issues and events that are important to you. We still cover breaking news, but we also want to let you know about the important issues in your community. As always, we are refining things as we go and we are listening to readers who have suggestions for us on how we can improve this new paper of ours even more.

Our new liftout sections - Sport on Monday, Business on Tuesday, Lifestyle and Arts on Wednesday, Heartland on Thursday and Outdoors/gardening, as well as a racing form guide on a Friday - have proven very popular.

Our Monday Sport liftout has been particularly well received and people particularly enjoy the space devoted to school sports. This will be a weekly feature and we encourage schools to tell us their sporting news by emailing sports@hbtoday.co.nz.

Another new Monday feature is our Weekend in Pictures pages at the back of the paper. Each weekend, we send our photographers out and about capturing images from the many events in our communities. Sometimes there are so many events on that we just cannot get to them all. If you have an event that you think is worth us sending a photographer to, please email our newsdesk at news@hbtoday.co.nz.

As always, let me know what you think as this is your newspaper.