Borehamwood and Elstree Times: Borehamwood and Elstree's Weekly Newspaper
The Borehamwood and Elstree Times is a weekly local newspaper serving Borehamwood and Elstree in Hertfordshire, England. Published by Newsquest Media Group and circulated in the two communities whose names it carries, the title is part of the north London Times series of Newsquest weeklies. Its official website is borehamwoodtimes.co.uk. Few local papers can trace their working life in quite the way this one can: a title first published in 1949, renamed in the late 1980s, judged the best weekly publication in Britain in 1990, and reshaped again after a change of ownership in 1998.
Borehamwood is a town with an unusual second identity. Alongside its life as a Hertfordshire commuter community, it is home to Elstree Studios and has long been associated with British film and television production. That connection has repeatedly coloured the newspaper's own story, most visibly when the paper marked a major anniversary of a famous television soap filmed on its patch. For readers, however, the Times has primarily been a record of ordinary local life: councils, schools, planning, sport, entertainment and the people of Borehamwood and Elstree.
Overview
The Borehamwood and Elstree Times is a paid local weekly published by Newsquest. Reference listings record its publisher as Newsquest, its owner as the USA Today Co. — the parent group behind Newsquest — its language as English and its ISSN as 1753-3279. The paper circulates in Elstree and Borehamwood in Hertfordshire, and it sits within a wider Times group that has also covered neighbouring north London and Hertfordshire communities including Hendon, Barnet and Edgware.
That group structure matters to understanding the title. The Borehamwood paper has never operated in isolation; editors, photographers and reporters have worked across the Times series, and farewell events for its staff have drawn colleagues from across the group. At the same time, the paper has maintained a distinct local identity tied to Borehamwood and Elstree rather than to the wider group, an identity reinforced each time its name has been debated and changed over the decades.
History
The newspaper was first published in 1949 under its original title, The Post, later known as the Borehamwood and Elstree Post. For nearly four decades that name served the area before a significant relaunch. The final issue of the Borehamwood and Elstree Post was published in December 1986, and early the following year a fresh, new-look newspaper reached newsstands as the Borehamwood Times was officially launched.
The relaunch involved more than a name. The Borehamwood Times moved premises, and its reporters switched from typewriters to computers, a change that quickened the speed and accuracy of producing copy. The bold move of renaming the paper was reported to have proved a success, and in 1990 the paper was adjudged to be the best weekly publication in Britain. By 2004 the paper had also moved its delivery day from Thursday to Friday, reflecting the changing habits of readers and retailers.
In 2007 the title celebrated its 20th year since changing from its original title, The Post — a milestone that underlined how completely the 1987 relaunch had become part of the paper's identity, even as its roots reached back to 1949.
Ownership and Publisher
A decisive ownership change came in 1998, when the paper was bought by Newsquest. After that purchase, the paper reverted to using Elstree in its title, becoming the Borehamwood and Elstree Times in the form readers know today. Newsquest Media Group remains its publisher, and the title is listed among Newsquest's weekly newspapers.
Newsquest is one of the United Kingdom's largest regional newspaper publishers, and within its structure the Borehamwood and Elstree Times operates as part of the north London Times series. Postal listings for the title have placed it at a Hendon address in north-west London, reflecting that shared group base rather than a standalone Borehamwood office. The group's editor structure has likewise been shared: in 2015 the group editor of the Times and Independent series was Martin Buhagiar, who spoke publicly about the paper's coverage of a major television anniversary on its patch.
Coverage and Content
The newspaper's coverage is rooted in Borehamwood and Elstree: local government, community events, schools, crime and courts, planning and development, business, entertainment and sport. As a weekly, its role has been to gather the week's local developments into a single printed record, while its website carries news on a more continuous basis between editions.
Entertainment occupies a distinctive place in that coverage because of Elstree Studios. The soap opera EastEnders is filmed at Elstree, on the paper's own patch, which gives the Borehamwood title a relationship with a national television institution that few weeklies share. When EastEnders reached its 30th anniversary in February 2015, the paper produced a souvenir edition built around the fictional Walford Gazette — the newspaper within the soap — bringing that fictional title to life in print.
Community Role
The community role of the Borehamwood and Elstree Times is illustrated by the career of its long-serving editor Rod Brewster, whose involvement with the town extended well beyond the newsroom. Brewster helped form the Elstree and Boreham Wood Museum in 2000 and was elected to the board of directors at Elstree Film and Television Studios. In 1996 he was elected an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Elstree and Borehamwood.
That pattern — a local editor embedded in civic institutions — captures what the title has meant locally. The paper has served as a platform for community announcements, a record of local achievement and a forum in which the town's institutions, from its museum to its studios, see themselves reflected. Its award history, including national recognition in 1990 and further awards during the 1990s and 2000s, suggests that community focus was matched by professional standards valued beyond the town itself.
Print and Digital Presence
The Borehamwood and Elstree Times website was launched in 2001, as the paper's focus switched increasingly towards internet users. By the time of its 20th anniversary celebrations in 2007, the website was reported to be visited by over 4,000 readers each week — a substantial digital audience for a local weekly at that early stage of online local news.
Today the paper's digital home remains borehamwoodtimes.co.uk, listed as its official website in reference directories. The site operates within Newsquest's audited local newspaper network, carrying the publisher's standard sections for news, sport, leisure and community information alongside advertising from local businesses. Print publication has continued on a weekly cycle alongside that digital presence, with the title's publication day having moved from Thursday to Friday during the 2000s.
Audience and Reach
The paper's audience is concentrated in Borehamwood and Elstree, two closely linked settlements in the borough of Hertsmere in southern Hertfordshire, within commuting distance of London. Its reach, however, has always been amplified by the Times group structure, which places its journalism alongside sister titles covering Hendon, Barnet and Edgware, and by a website that made its reporting available far beyond its print circulation area from 2001 onwards.
Readers have included generations of residents who followed the title through its successive identities: as The Post from 1949, as the Borehamwood Times from 1987, and as the Borehamwood and Elstree Times after 1998. That continuity through name changes is itself a measure of reach — the audience stayed with the paper as its title, premises, technology and owner all changed around it.
Notable People
Rod Brewster is the figure most closely associated with the modern paper. He began his career with the Times Group in 1958, aged 15, and worked as a photographer for more than 30 years, photographing subjects including the Queen, the Queen Mother, Margaret Thatcher and The Beatles. In 1991 he was appointed editor of the Borehamwood Times, and during his time at the helm the newspaper won 11 awards, including Free Newspaper of the Year. He retired in June 2007, aged 62, after 13 years as editor, at a farewell attended by staff from across the Times Group. The group's editor, John Killeen, praised the amount of good work he had done for the community.
Martin Buhagiar, group editor of the Times and Independent series in 2015, fronted the paper's EastEnders anniversary coverage, explaining how the souvenir edition looked at the BBC's plans for the soap and its new set, and carried interviews with two of its stars. Together, Brewster and Buhagiar illustrate two eras of the title: the photographer-editor rooted in the town, and the group editor managing coverage across a series of titles.
The EastEnders Souvenir Edition
The paper's 2015 EastEnders souvenir remains its best-documented special edition. To mark the soap's 30th anniversary, the Borehamwood and Elstree Times produced a four-page souvenir edition of the fictional Walford Gazette, the newspaper read by characters in the programme. The souvenir featured a spoof front-page article about a major storyline — the unsolved murder of the character Lucy Beale, whose killer was due to be revealed during live shows that week — and its masthead was designed from an original copy used on the set at Elstree Studios, in the same colour scheme.
The edition also looked at the BBC's plans to mark the anniversary and for the future of the programme, including a new EastEnders set about to be built. It was a piece of publishing that only the paper for Borehamwood and Elstree could naturally have produced: the fictional newspaper of a fictional London borough, printed by the real newspaper of the place where that borough is filmed.
Recent Developments
In its recent life the title has continued as a Newsquest weekly within the north London Times series, with its website forming part of the publisher's network of local news sites. Trade coverage of the title in HoldTheFrontPage has included the movement of senior staff — including an editor running a county-wide news site moving to a rival publisher — and a dispute in which a local football club branded the weekly yesterday's news as it cut ties with the paper, saying it would report matches itself. Such episodes reflect the pressures on weekly titles as clubs, councils and community organisations publish directly to their own audiences.
None of that has erased the paper's central distinction: a local title first published in 1949, relaunched in 1987, nationally recognised in 1990, and still carrying the names of Borehamwood and Elstree in its masthead under Newsquest ownership. For a directory of world news media, the Borehamwood and Elstree Times stands as an example of the durable British weekly — changed in name, technology and ownership, but continuous in its attachment to one place.
