Allow me to be among the first of your readers to congratulate the management, editorial staff and you as editor for the excellent initiative to produce a new format of my favourite local daily.

When one considers that this newspaper is one of the youngest in circulation, it is encouraging to see that your managerial ideas have enhanced the standard of local publications, as eventually other dailies have followed your example.

It was thrilling to peruse each and every page of this first ’large’ innovative newspaper. Surely exposing the great effort of each and every member of your staff, the paper is fresh in its ideas, starting from a double editorial.

Articles are better displayed, especially those with magnificent photos accompanying them. Keeping with tradition of being first in local journalistic innovations, articles are also accompanied with snippet statistics making them easier to read. Even the weather chart and TV and radio pages are imaginative and well displayed.

Being a sport enthusiast, your sports pages give an excellent service of local and international sport news, and these are well outlined and illustrated.

Another first is that The Malta Independent is environmentally friendly and printed in such a way that one does not need to wash his hands after reading it.

A big ‘well done’ to all of you and keep your good tradition of being first... as always!

■ H. Calleja

St Julian’s