The Derby Telegraph’s Steve Hall was today named Editor of the Year at the Regional Press Awards for his barnstorming campaign to save rail jobs on his patch.
Steve, left, became the first winner of the newly-created prize after leading the fight to win new contracts for the city’s Bombardier factory after the government snubbed its bid for the £1.3bn Thameslink project.
Judges praised Steve for taking the campaign from the Midlands to Europe, reporting from the Bombardier company HQ, and winning the support of his home community as he addressed the crowd at a demonstration and lobby of Parliament.
They said: “The campaign was a great example of an editor selecting the right campaign to support the readers and sticking to it until the paper achieved a result. Hall led from the front and came face to face with the issue.”
Said Steve: “When I was 16 I tried to get a job with Derby Locomotive Works but I wsn’t bright enough so I went into journalism instead.
“It was the proudest moment of my career when we helped to save that factory from closure and I think this might be the second proudest moment.”
The Newspaper of the Year awards in their categories went to, the Northern Scot, Essex Chronicle, Cambridge News and the Belfast Telegraph.
The Northern Scot picked up the award for Weekly Newspaper below 20,000 circulation and the Essex Chronicle took the award for Weekly Newspaper above 20,000 circulation for the second year running.
The award for Daily/Sunday Newspaper below 25,000 went to the Cambridge News and the Bel Tel won the award for Daily/Sunday Newspaper above 25,000.
Chairman of the judges, former SoE president and former editor of the Manchester Evening News, Paul Horrocks, said: “These awards have demonstrated the amazing quality of journalistic effort that is still being produced in these challenging times for the whole of the media and regional and local papers in particular.”
The winners of the last five categories to be announced were as follows:
Editor of the Year
Winner: Steve Hall, Derby Telegraph
Weekly Newspaper (below 20,000)
Winner: The Northern Scot
Highly Commended: The Ulster Herald
Weekly Newspaper (above 20,000)
Winner: Essex Chronicle
Highly Commended: Newbury Weekly News
Daily/Sunday (below 25,000)
Winner: Cambridge News
Highly Commended: Lancashire Evening Post
Daily/Sunday (above 25,000)
Winner: Belfast Telegraph
Highly Commended: Sunday Life
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Before the usual naysayers come on, I know first hand how hard Steve worked last year. From taking the Bombardier campaign to Berlin and London to helping organise the rally and speaking in front of 10,000 people. That’s not to mention the huge efforts the whole team made to make the Bombardier campaign effective in paper. Top stuff, mate. Well done and richly deserved.
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I just hope Steve works as hard for all those small businesses under threat
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John, our latest campaign “We Want To Work” goes as far as fighting for jobs for individuals. Previous camapigns have included battling for jobs which were threatened at the local tax office. We have also worked with unions to try to dilute the impact of the closure of Celanese. Of course, this has all been done when we have had many redundancies in our own building. When our own printers were losing their jobs, Steve helped every individual who needed assistance with their CV and used his contacts to arrange link-ups with local firms.
Well done to Steve and also to the the team behind the campaign. This was a proper old fashioned newsper campaign to help preserve jobs at one of the city’s biggest employers and one of its oldest industries. The whole city got behind it. I think its refreshing in this day and age that an editor steps out of his office into the community and gets involved to such an extent and leads from the front.
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Well done Steve, brilliantly done. The campaign failed, of course, because the Government refused to reverse its decision on awarding the Bombardier contract to a foreign company. True, the Derby firm won a much smaller contract later but it probably would have without the campaign.
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