New Look Morning Star Out June 1st

The "new look" Morning Star will be published on June 1st.

The following is a statement by Bill Benfield, the Morning Star's editor who has overseen the changes, which include more pages midweek and at weekend in a new weekend edition; better use of colour and new typeface and layout.

Workers Uniting Group supporters can check out the Morning Star at the new website:

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php

"We have been, according to our detractors, a clique of Stalinists, a nest of revisionists, a set of counter-revolutionaries, a bunch of state capitalist stooges, a pack of bitter geriatrics living in the past and a group of head-in-the-clouds idealists, fantasists with only a failed socialist Soviet Union to reminisce about.

During our existence, we have survived fire, flood, boycott, imprisonment of our staff, government bans and proscriptions, distribution embargoes, libel actions, physical attacks, receiverships, advertising embargoes and political misrepresentation and we are still here.

So perhaps we are doing something right.

But the one thing that we have never been accused of is a lack of ambition, which is probably just as well for a tiny, perennially broke newspaper forever teetering on the edge of bankruptcy setting out to tilt at the biggest windmill that there is - free-market capitalism red in tooth and claw, if not in politics.

And it's all made more difficult because we march to a different drummer than the rest of the national press.

In an economy in which newspapers number their readers in the millions and their revenue in the tens of millions, we count our readers in the thousands and our revenue in minus numbers, relieved only by the unstinting efforts of our readers and supporters to raise the money to keep us going and the occasional legacy which brings our head momentarily above the water level every now and again.

But, when the going gets tough, that's when we have to raise our game. No battening down of hatches at William Rust House, I'm afraid.

And the going is getting pretty tough at the moment, with unemployment soaring and set to climb even higher, manufacturing at a new low every month and MPs and bankers attempting to outdo each other in the standards of living stakes, both with public money, be it in dodgy bonuses or outrageous allowances.

So it's time to dust down the ambition and raise our game again.

Once more, the Morning Star is going against the trend.

Where other papers are cutting back, we are expanding our pagination. Where the rest of the press is sacking staff, we have taken on 20 per cent more.

It's a new-look Morning Star from now on, with 33 per cent more pages during the week, 50 per cent more colour and a weekend edition of at least 20 pages, rising to 24 when the occasion demands.

Thanks to the generosity of a small consortium of readers, we are going all out to spread the message that socialism is the only sane future for the world and that future is not only possible, it's essential.

We've revamped the page designs and are continually revamping the content. We are whacking out thousands of new copies into new outlets every day and fighting for a socialist future in which people, not transnational companies and big banks, decide on the way forward for the world. And our ears are all open. If you like what we are doing with your paper, write in and tell us.

If you don't like it, tell us how you want it done differently. We will listen and, if what you tell us makes sense, we'll act on it.

We are going to have to win thousands of new readers if we are to sustain the bigger and brighter Morning Star. And we are up for the battle if you are.

We are going to be talking in a voice that many of our readers won't immediately recognise and dressing the paper in bright and unfamiliar clothes.

But every reader, young or old, will still recognise the message that should be coming out, loud and clear, from all our pages.

And that is that the world belongs to working people and, if they take the chance, they can and will make it a world of justice, freedom and equality.

It's by no means an easy battle to fight. And we are by no means the biggest fighter.

But we are your voice and we intend to make it the loudest and most convincing voice that we can.

So welcome to the new-look Morning Star. Some of you have read our paper for decades, others for just weeks. But all of you have a part to play in a renewed battle for peace and socialism. We know that you will fight your corner and we are doing our best to give you a revived and resharpened weapon to use in that fight."