 Shortly after on 3 October 1997 it ditched the classified advertisements from the front page and replaced it with news, being one of the last newspapers in the UK to do so.In 2009, the newspaper switched from its traditional broadsheet format to a smaller 'compact' layout, following in the footsteps of its sister title, The Northern Echo.In August 2018, Hannah Chapman, a reporter on the paper, took over the editorship of the Darlington and Stockton Times and its sister publication, The Northern Echo.