Another evening newspaper is following the recent trend to switch to overnight printing and become a morning title.

The Evening Leader, which covers Wrexham, Flintshire and Chester, will become 'the Leader' from 14 September.

No redundancies or major staff changes will happen as a result of the plans which follow an experiment in January this year, whereby the Evening Leader's Friday edition was printed overnight, resulting in a sales increase, according to the NWN Media title.

First launched in 1973, the Evening Leader will also undergo a makeover and have individual sections tailored to give each day a different theme.

There will be a new sports supplement every Monday and a celebrity news section with content "developed radically with the aim of attracting a new audience to add to the existing loyal readership", said the paper in a statement.

This latest development follows the recent relaunch of all the websites run by titles in the NWN Media stable.

Editor-in-chief Barrie Jones said: "Of course we will still be packing the paper with as much local news as possible.

"But I believe that our experiment on a Friday clearly shows that the extended shelf life of a carefully packaged morning title exceeds the sales potential of a traditional evening paper no matter how up to date that is made to be.

"We will be combining moving to a morning publication with a vigorous overhaul of content to develop a separate character to each day's edition, building to a varied five day platform with credible sales appeal."

The Evening Leader is the latest evening paper among regional dailies to switch to overnight printing in recent years.

Northcliffe's Derby-based Evening Telegraph became the Derby Telegraph in April as part of wider changes involving centralised subbing and the scrapping of 'City Final' editions.

And titles such as the Plymouth Evening Herald, Portsmouth Evening News and Southend Evening Echo are just three of several which have dropped the word 'Evening' from their mastheads as part of the switch to overnight publication.

A mock-up front page of the new 'Leader'