The ‘ill wind’ of Quest’s closure of the ‘Noosa Journal’ and sister papers in the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, last weekend has seen pagination of rival APN products soar.

The Domain-branded property section of APN’s ‘Noosa News’ leaped to 160 heatset pages today following the closure. Several real estate businesses which had been ‘Journal’ supporters switched their advertising to the survivor, some taking 14 and 16 consecutive pages.

The tabloid product is printed at APN Print’s hybrid print site at Yandina, where a single-width manroland Uniset heatset tower is integrated with 4x1 Regioman coldset units. With heatset products printed in sections of 16 pages and collated offline, the growth will strengthen the case of Gary Osborne – who was a speaker at last weekend’s SWUG conference in Brisbane – for a second heatset tower.

News Limited subsidiary Quest Community Newspapers took inspiration from UK stablemate the ‘News of the World’ last weekend with a souvenir cover headlined ‘It’s been great’. The 64-page final issue with a generic ‘The Journal’ masthead, contained advertising and stories from the whole region, and sadly – as on many previous occasions – was not the best-printed product in the street.