Guest Speaker: Kirsty Newton

Editor of ‘Cornwall Today’, Kirsty Newton today revealed her magazines aims and ambitions to eager first year journalism students.

Kirsty, who has been in the journalism profession for 10 years told students that, “Cornwall Today is looking at the younger end of the market”, for its target audience in comparison to previous years.

Since Kirsty took over as editor of ‘Cornwall Today’ over a year ago she has made many changes to the magazines content, including the addition of many new features.

Amongst the new features added to the magazine is a property and leisure section. These features have been bought in to attract a younger audience.

Regular features in the magazine already included: a home and gardens section, a food and drinks section and a wildlife section as well as various articles on village life in Cornwall.

The magazines target readership is an ABC1 readership audience in relation to the NRS Social Grading System. An ABC1 readership is stereotypically defined as the upper middle classes.

Also since Kirsty’s arrival the magazine has rose from 40 to 216 pages an issue, which according to Kirsty, “has allowed for a broader range of advertising”, which has also increased the magazines income per issue.

The majority of the magazines articles are written by freelance journalists, whose work on average is valued around 10 pence per word.

On average 16000 copies of the magazine are printed each month, a 1/3 of which are subscribers who live outside of Cornwall.

Despite this ‘Cornwall Today’ also has around half a dozen competitors in the South West that rival the magazine on a monthly basis, including: ‘Inside Cornwall’, ‘Taste of Cornwall’ and ‘Devon Today’.

Before taking up the role of Editor of ‘Cornwall Today’, Kirsty worked as a trainee for the ‘Western Morning News’ in Plymouth, before becoming Deputy Editor for ‘Devon Today’.

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