Frome Standard

It was founded in 1886 as The Somerset Standard and Wilts and Dorset Advertiser and kept that title up until 1962 when it and the Somerset Guardian were twinned. In the Frome area the newspaper was called the Somerset Standard, Somerset Guardian; vice versa in the Radstock area. The two titles separated once more in 1981, and the Standard became simply the Somerset Standard, changing to the Frome & Somerset Standard from 2004 to 2007. It adopted its present title on 25 July 2013, when new editor Bede MacGowan decided a name that better reflected the newspaper’s circulation area was needed.

It’s published by Bath News & Media, part of Northcliffe Media, which used to be the regional newspapers and websites division of the Daily Mail & General Trust but is now part of Local World. The head office is in Bath, but there’s also a district office in Midsomer Norton (an earlier office in Frome itself has now closed).

The Somerset Standard lost its own website back in 2011; the somersetstandard.co.uk URL was redirected to Northcliffe’s general website for Somerset, thisissomerset.co.uk (which itself now redirects to the Western Daily Press‘s website). However, Local World’s decision in early 2013 to give its newspapers “publisher-branded” websites means that the Standard has a dedicated website once more.

It comes out on Thursdays.