17 days to go until historic Advocate change

On April 23 the Northern Advocate moves to a morning delivery cycle, and changes shape to a compact (tabloid shaped) paper.

And having taken some time out last night with some of the clients and people that the paper works behind the scenes and publicly with, I feel even more confident about the change we have coming.

Because your local paper has strong relationships in the community, and those relationships are the backbone of a strong region, let alone a strong newspaper.

One of the key points that keeps popping up is how will the paper fare against the NZ Herald.

We will fare just fine - Northland needs a local and a national paper circulating in its midst.

And as a Northlander, I am very confident with the direction the paper is heading in.

We will keep doing what only we can do - provide strong local content and champion our region, and investing in our community. Ironically, we are the region's dominant communication and advertising outlet, yet we do a terrible job of telling people what we do beyond our core business of news and advertising.

We support the local community to the tune of $500,000 each year in publicity and advertising sponsorship, and we heavily back Project Promise and will continue to do so until we have an oncology unit built in Whangarei. On April 23 what won't change is your local paper will continue to champion our fantastic region.