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The Leader’s founding editor was one of the proprietors, John Lewis Rowlands. He wanted to establish it as a journal ‘for the interchange of ideas’. For the first edition he wrote ‘We now launch our little barque on the fickle seas of fate, and leave it to the mercy of the gales of criticism, trusting it will prove seaworthy’.

It wasn’t until decades later that he was succeeded by another long serving editor, Gwyn Prosser. Under his stewardship, the Leader became part of the Thomson Regional Newspapers in 1965 after more than 60 years in private ownership. Production of the paper moved to Merthyr Tydfil in 1969.

Gwyn Prosser’s successors as editors were first Glyn Griffiths and then Rowland Davies, a grandson of one of the paper’s original owners. Among the editors in recent years, Linda Morgan, was the first woman to edit a paper in South Wales.

There have been other changes too; in the 1990’s the paper changed its name to ‘The Cynon Valley Leader’ to reflect the papers commitment to coverage of all valley news. In the 1990’s the paper followed a national trend with the use of colour as the paper embraced the benefits of new technology.