A weekly editor who still attends two parish council meetings a week has listed his most memorable stories after chalking up 25 years in the chair.
To mark the anniversary of his editorship Mike Lockley, editor of the Chase Post in Cannock, Staffordshire wrote an article looking back at 36 years of reporting in the town.
In it he told how during 25 years as editor he has published stories on big cats, UFOs, a lottery winning transsexual, randy grannies and illicit romps on Cannock Chase.
He also recalled the first court case he ever covered when he was a reporter for the now defunct Cannock Advertiser.
Writes Mike, an award-winning columnist for the Sunday Mercury who still attends two parish council night jobs a week: “The case was a sickening example of domestic violence. An enraged husband from Chadsmoor had struck his wife repeatedly about the head with a candelabra.
“It made page three of the weekly newspaper, now sadly deceased like the mines that spawned Cannock. “Man bludgeons wife with candelabra”, the banner headline screamed.
“I returned to the same court next day – to be greeted by howls of laughter from ushers, solicitors, clerks… even defendants.
“Is this the level of reporting we can expect from you?” asked the chairman of the bench, studying my exclusive.
“Nervously, I pointed out every detail had been checked: the charge, the attacker’s name, age and address.
“‘Every detail,’ huffed the JP frostily, ‘except the implement used in the incident. I think you’ll find it was a can of lager..;”
“Close to four decades on, in the pubs and working men’s clubs, they still remind me of that. I’m glad they do. It means they remember what I write. It means they feel part of the local paper. It means what I produce can fall into folklore. It means I’m within touching distance of our readership.
“Occasionally, the national newspapers will be intrigued enough by a tale to write ABOUT the people of my patch – I write FOR them. Their reporters can get the facts wrong, ruffle feathers, then disappear into the distance. I can’t because there’s always someone in the street ready to loudly broadcast the inaccuracies.”
It was a billboard that Mike saw while holidaying abroad, that made him decide his career path. It proclaimed: “Woman in owl attack dies of diarrhoea”.
“Boy, I wanted to do that story,” said Mike.
He added: “I, like every other weekly journalist, can play a part in the community I work in. I’ve helped save schools, stopped telecommunication towers being erected and even put pink custard back on a school menu.
“Times and technology change, people’s desire to know what’s happening in their community doesn’t. A town without its own weekly newspaper is a town without a heart.”
Sign up for our free daily email bulletin
Follow HTFP on Twitter
Got a story? Email the Editor at
Congratulations Mike – a man very much after my own heart ! Wish all communities could still be so blessed with the weeklies and journalists that once served them so well. Cannock not only has a fine weekly, it also has top hockey teams !
Report this comment
Mike’s a legend. He’s almost single-handedly responsible for setting me on the road I’m on now, having recently started my first editorship. His bit of the university journalism course I was on – the only part actually dedicated to the real world of local news – was massively inspirational, thanks largely to his undying enthusiasm for the job. I realised I just wanted to get out and do this stuff rather than sit in a classroom for three years – and was lucky enough to get work experience at my local weekly, which led to a job offer (and a paid-for block release course at Darlington – who needs university?) If I hadn’t made that move then, God knows where I’d be now. The sad thing is, I look at the current generation of young journalists and I don’t see a great many Mike Lockleys coming through…
Report this comment
As I celebrate my 37 years as editor of the Largs & Millport Weekly News this month I heartily endorse Mike’s comment that a town without a weekly paper is a town without a heart.
It’s a great pity in the industry that many of us are no longer in the town in which our papers started.
In my weekly column today I mention that I am delighted to be invited to Buckingham Palace for Her Majesty’s reception for the media to help launch her diamond jubilee. I make the comment that if you stay long enough in the one place somebody will notice!
In my first week as editor in 1974 there was a house fire in Largs and a woman phoned me to say:”It was my home that was burned down and I am still fuming.”
Report this comment
Mike is not only a good editor, but a top human being, congratulations Lockers!
Report this comment
I first met Mike many years ago as a new reporter on a rival weekly covering part of the Chase patch and was impressed by his enthusiasm and local knowledge.
I can’t say his tabloid style has always been to my personal taste and some of the trumped-up stuff about UFOs and big cats on the Chase has been truly groan-worthy. I also wonder what he’s been imbibing sometimes when I read his fanciful column in the Sunday Mercury.
But Mike is truly an old-school local journalist who knows his patch probably better than he’d recognise a new age-spot on the back of his hand. He has driven and inspired a couple of generations of reporters to do a thoroughly decent job for the district and taken the serious hard-hitting news very seriously indeed when it most mattered.
It can not be entirely coincidental, surely, that the Chase Post has seen several rivals come and go and is one of the tiny number of weeklies left in the Trinity Mirror Midlands stable despite all its changes and cutbacks.
Congratulations on your milestone, Mike, and may you long continue.
Report this comment
He’s not going to make another 25. The Chase Post is to be closed, according to new story just put up on HTFP.
Report this comment