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Search for'A carefully digested epitome of domestic and foreign news - with instructive and humorous literary selections.'
That was what the newly-established Tamworth Herald offered its readers when the very first edition was published on August 8, 1868. Today - as the Herald enters its 135th year - the town's premier newspaper may not devote quite as much space to world events, which receive saturation coverage on television and radio but the multi-award winning paper remains unsurpassed in providing its readers with the very best coverage of news, issues and events of concern to local people.
The first ever Tamworth Herald carried four pages of world news, including everything from 'Horrific Murder of Austrian Nobleman' to 'Gold Strike in Alaska', plus four pages of local reports and advertisements. There was even a serial story thrown in for good measure. The 1,200 copies circulated in those days were laboriously produced on a primitive hand press - and a very different looking paper it was in those early days - with no pictures, few advertisements and long solemn columns of news in microscopic print.
The paper developed well throughout the next 50 years and in the 1940s and 1950s, the Atherstone Herald was acquired and amalgamated with the main title along with the Coleshill Chronicle, which was bought by the Herald in 1964. In 1966, the company invested in a new web-offset Goss Suburban Press - an enormous venture at the time which enabled the paper to produce upwards of 80 commercial newspapers such as Cadbury News, Sesame (for the Open University), Stream (for Severn-Trent Water Authority) and MEB News, among dozens of others.
The 1990s then saw considerable upheaval at the Herald. Around the time of moving to new premises at Bitterscote in 1996, the company was acquired by the Kent-based Adscene Group, and so entered a difficult period of change.
In 1999, however, Central Independent Newspapers - the umbrella company which includes the Tamworth, Atherstone and Coleshill Heralds, the Lichfield Mercury, Sutton Observer and the Walsall Advertiser - was acquired by its present owners, the Northcliffe Group, who own the Daily Mail.
The circulation and reputation of the Herald - now under the editorship of life-long Tamworthian Sam Holliday - grew steadily and the Herald of today is nudging sales of around 29-30,000 copies per week with a readership which would fill the old Wembley Stadium. This compares with the early sales in the 1870s of approximately 2,500, and sales at the time of King George V's Diamond Jubilee in 1928 of 7,000.
In recent years the paper has won a string of awards. In 1994 the Herald won the British Telecom sponsored prized title of Midlands Weekly Newspaper of the Year and they repeated that feat again 2002. The newspaper was also named as the Press Gazette's Campaigning Newspaper of the Year for 2000 beating off competition from every weekly and evening newspaper in the United Kingdom. And in 2003 the paper was voted as the Newspaper Society Weekly Campaigning Newspaper Of The Year as well.
Now the paper remains ambitious and confident for the future. Just as the original metal type has evolved into today's hi-tech computer type setting, the Herald will continue to change and adapt to future needs. And as the paper reports on the first years of the 21st century, it should not be forgotten that those employed by the Herald over the last 135 years have left a remarkable legacy for future generations. Every Tamworth Herald, dating right back to Daniel Addison's first edition in 1868, is bound and microfilmed to provide a unique and invaluable record of Tamworth life.
