Keighley News

About Keighley News

The Keighley News is the weekly newspaper of Keighley, the historic mill town of the Aire valley in West Yorkshire. Founded in 1862, it has served the town through the age of the worsted mills, the post-war transformation of the textile industry and the town's modern reinvention. Published every Thursday in compact tabloid format by Newsquest, it is the sister paper of the Bradford Telegraph & Argus, and its patch takes in the moorland towns and villages around Keighley — including Haworth, home of the Brontës — through keighleynews.co.uk and its weekly print edition.

History and Founding

The paper was founded in 1862, in the middle of the Victorian boom that made Keighley one of the great textile towns of the West Riding. The town's worsted mills were expanding rapidly, the railway had connected Keighley to Bradford, Leeds and the Lancashire towns, and a growing industrial population needed its own newspaper. The Keighley News was launched to serve that community, and it has been its paper of record ever since — through the peak of the textile trade, the two world wars, the industry's long decline and the town's regeneration.

The paper's archive, which runs back into the nineteenth century, is a remarkable record of industrial West Yorkshire: the mill strikes and lockouts, the building of the town's civic institutions, the waves of immigration that reshaped the town in the post-war decades, and the changing face of the Aire valley across 160 years.

Ownership and Publishing

The Keighley News is owned by Newsquest, the UK's second-largest publisher of regional newspapers, itself owned by the American publishing company behind USA Today. It is the sister paper of the Telegraph & Argus, Bradford's daily, and is published as part of Newsquest's Yorkshire operation alongside titles including the Ilkley Gazette, the Craven Herald and the Wharfedale Observer. Newsquest's ownership has brought the paper the resources of a national group while keeping its editorial focus firmly on Keighley and the Worth valley.

The Tabloid Switch and New Publication Day

The newspaper was a broadsheet until March 2007, when it became a tabloid — following the industry-wide move to the compact format that readers found easier to handle. In the same year it changed its publication day from Friday to Thursday, the day on which it has appeared ever since. The changes were part of Newsquest's modernisation of its Yorkshire weeklies, refreshing the paper's design and sharpening its focus on the week's biggest local stories.

Headquarters

The paper was long based in its own building in Keighley, but the economics of the modern regional press brought change. From September 2007 to July 2012, half of the Keighley News building was leased to Bradford College, which operated a community learning centre from the premises. The Keighley News reception desk closed its doors permanently on 29 January 2013, with reception services and editing moving to the Telegraph & Argus offices in Bradford; the whole Keighley building was sold to a local businessman. The paper's staff now work from Newsquest's office in Skipton, keeping the title's journalists in the heart of its Craven and Airedale patch.

Coverage Area and Readership

As well as Keighley itself, the paper's circulation area includes Cross Hills, Cullingworth, Denholme, East Morton, Haworth, Oxenhope, Silsden and Steeton — a patch that runs from the Aire valley floor up onto the moors. It is a district of exceptional character: Haworth, the Brontë village, with its parsonage museum and cobbled Main Street; the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, the preserved steam line made famous by The Railway Children; and the moorland villages of the Pennine fringe. Circulation for the period from January to December 2018 stood at 5,419; the most recent audited figure, for 2023, was 2,535.

Editorial Content and Sections

The Thursday News covers Keighley's civic life: Bradford Council's Keighley-area business, planning and development, policing and the courts, the NHS and the town's schools. The town's industrial heritage — and its modern manufacturing survivors — give the business pages a distinctive flavour. Sport is led by the Keighley Cougars rugby league club, whose Cougar Park ground is one of the spiritual homes of the summer game, alongside the town's football, cricket and the fell-running and cycling of the moors. The Brontë country tourism trade, the Worth Valley Railway's galas and the area's walking and heritage attractions fill the features pages.

Digital Presence

The paper's website, keighleynews.co.uk, breaks news through the week and carries the announcements, tributes and public notices that sustain the title online. Newsquest has introduced online subscriptions for around forty of its weekly titles, including the Keighley News, offering readers unlimited articles, reduced advertising and the ability to comment for £4.99 a month or £52 a year. Social media channels extend the paper's reach into the valley's communities, and the digital edition of the Thursday paper allows readers to read the full edition online. The paper is complemented by the Keighley & Craven Target, Newsquest's free weekly for the district, which sits alongside the paid-for News in the group's Yorkshire portfolio, extending the group's reach into every household in the Aire and Worth valleys.

Campaigns and Community Role

The News has a proud tradition of campaigning journalism. Its reporters have championed causes from town-centre regeneration to health services, and the paper's community awards and charity appeals have made it a fixture of civic life in the Aire valley. One celebrated episode saw the paper help a teenage victim of a serious sex attack in her two-year fight to change the law on identity parades — an example of the campaigning local journalism at which the weekly press excels. The paper's fundraising drives, including campaigns for the local hospice, have repeatedly shown the generosity of its readers.

Challenges of the Modern Era

Like every weekly in the country, the Keighley News has faced the migration of advertising online and the steady erosion of print circulation — from more than 5,000 copies in 2018 to around 2,500 in 2023. The closure of its Keighley reception and the sale of its building were difficult moments, felt keenly in a town that had always been able to walk into its newspaper's office. The NUJ chapel at Newsquest's Yorkshire titles has campaigned on pay and staffing through successive restructures, reflecting the pressures on the journalists who remain. But the move to shared Newsquest facilities in Bradford and Skipton has kept a dedicated reporting team on the patch, and the digital subscription model, the paper's strong community identity and the enduring appetite for Worth valley news offer a path forward for a title that has survived the end of the mills, the recessions and the digital revolution.

Legacy and Place in Yorkshire Journalism

For more than 160 years, the Keighley News has been the paper of the Aire valley — through the age of the worsted barons, the world wars, the transformation of the textile towns and the rebirth of Brontë country as a world-famous destination. From broadsheet to tabloid, from Friday to Thursday, from its own Keighley offices to the shared newsrooms of the Newsquest era, it has never stopped being what it was founded to be in 1862: the newspaper Keighley reads to find out about itself.