Leicester Mercury

It was founded in 1874 as the Leicester Daily Mercury, but dropped the Daily in 1919.

It’s published by Leicester Mercury Group Ltd, part of Northcliffe Media – formerly the regional publishing arm of the Daily Mail and General Trust, but now a constituent of the Local World group. It’s produced from editorial offices in Leicester.

Up until 2006 it had local editions for each of the five towns mentioned above, but these were first consolidated into County East and County West editions, and now apparently only the one main edition appears. It still has reporting staff in each of the towns, though.

In December 2006 the Mercury became only the second newspaper in the Northcliffe group to obtain union recognition, when 79 per cent of staff voting favoured representation by the National Union of Journalists.

A weekly edition for Loughborough, the Loughborough Mercury, was launched in October 2012, with 10 pages of locally-produced content. There’s also a companion group of Mail weekly freesheets, with titles for Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Coalville, Loughborough. Leicester’s edition, the Leicester Mail, was rebranded the Mercury Extra at the end of February 2013.