What I love about newspapers is how you can touch, smell and even tear off and chew up corners of them to create tiny chunks of home-made filler when redecorating.
Even better, you can read the latest court reports down on the non-WiFi seafront in my favourite North Yorkshire village of Staithes, analyse the race cards safely while enjoying a hot bubble bath, and then carefully dry, tightly fold and tie them to help start the wood and coal fire in my study.
And I challenge any digital whizzkid to tell me how you can do any of that with a website…
With this passion for newsprint in mind, the top position for my regional heroes of 2014 goes to Alastair Machray, editor of the Liverpool Echo, for launching and sustaining the new Sunday Echo.
Liverpool Echo editor Alastair Machray announces the launch of its Sunday edition
For those of you that missed it, earlier this year Alastair decided – while nearly everyone else was squealing with excitement about digital – to start the presses again on the Sabbath, giving the popular Echo brand a new lease of life for loyal Merseyside readers.
I guess hats also need to be tipped in the direction of Trinity Mirror, the Echo’s publishers, as they would have had to sign off what many might have told them was a madcap plan.
But it was Alastair’s name as editor that went up in lights as the front man for the launch, and it was his name that would have gone down in flames if it had flopped.
As it is, the Sunday Echo is now nearly a year old, and seems to have settled its sales at well over 20,000 a week – more than 3,000 higher than the more established Wales on Sunday, and within touching distance of the much older but plummeting Sunday Mercury.
Others have launched newspapers during the year, including Richard Walker, editor of Newsquest’s Sunday Herald up in Scotland, who brought out The National in November in the wake of all the furore over tartan independence.
But in Richard’s case, he gets my number two ‘regional hero’ slot not just for his new daily paper but also for the ballsy way he called the mood of his readers and boosted the Sunday Herald’s sales in and around the referendum – regardless of the eventual result.
It would be churlish not to give my number three regional hero position to Bill Martin, editor of Local World’s Western Morning News in Plymouth, who launched a Sunday edition of that paper earlier this year – regardless of whether this ends up as successful as the Sunday Echo.
(I know – Lisa Templeton has since been appointed to edit the WMN on Sunday, and she deserves this mention in brackets, but Bill launched it.)
Coming in at number four is Sir Ray Tindle, the 88-year-old media moghul who was on my list last year, and who remains one of my heroes in 2014 for two reasons – for rebuking regional newspaper doom-mongers in February, and then announcing the launch of four new print titles for London in November.
At number five is Lesley Potter, editor of the independently-owned Reading Chronicle, who snubbed Trinity Mirror’s digital-only experiment by announcing: “We at the Reading Chronicle have absolutely no intention of abandoning print… [and] believe our readers deserve to have a choice in how they access their news.”
Number six is Mike Gilson, the newly-announced editor of the Brighton Argus, just because I like the cut of his jib: he’s travelled across Great Britain in the last 15 years editing the The Scotsman, The News, Portsmouth and the Peterborough Telegraph before landing at the Belfast Telegraph more than five years ago.
Such is the intensity of Mike’s belief in newspapers that he’s leaving Belfast, where his award-winning paper was circulating some 48,000 copies a day – 77pc paid – in an attempt to rescue the struggling Brighton Argus, currently selling just over 14,000 a day; now that’s heroic.
Jon-Paul Hedge makes number seven – because of the way he became editor of Local World’s daily-turned-weekly Exeter Express and Echo in January and by November announced he was going to make it a twice-a-week paper in 2015.
(Yes, his boss David Montgomery was mentioned in this story as well, but I’m still a believer that the editor should get the plaudits, as he or she will always carry the can).
An unusual entry at number eight is Adam Smith, the wacky Stourbridge News reporter who sometimes goes by the name of Steve Zacharanda, for winning Weekly Journalist of the Year at the Midlands Media Awards.
I know there were lots of great award winners in 2014, but Adam – who once ‘resigned’ on me via YouTube while slightly inebriated when ‘helping’ Obama’s presidential campaign – will always make me smile and at the same time give me indigestion.
And finally, for a little fun, the number nine and ten positions go to Alun Thorne and Les Reid – both recently of the Coventry Telegraph, one the editor, one the political correspondent – simply for having such a great row, which was once what any decent editorial floor was all about!
Well done to all my regional heroes, and best wishes to you and all HoldtheFrontPage readers for 2015.
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Congratulations to all of Dyson’s heroes. One huge omission however – the reporters, photographers, production staff, sales reps and others who turn up day in, day out, striving to deliver quality products despite the ever bloodier battleground we all inhabit. Never has so much been owed to so few and all that….
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Good point, well made.
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Anyone who helps keep local papers alive deserves a pat on the back.
The word hero is much abused though.
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Can’t vouch for any of the others as I’ve not had the pleasure, but certainly second your views on Alistair Machray. Only met the man once, for an hour-long interview. It was enough to know if anyone could make the Sunday work, he could.
And love the ‘you can touch, smell and even tear off and chew up corners’ of newspapers to create tiny chunks of home-made filler when redecorating’.
As a passionate lover of newspapers it breaks my heart to see what’s happening in our industry. But confident it will rise from the ashes where you ‘carefully dry, tightly fold and tie them to help start the wood and coal fire’..
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Nothing I have done in 40 odd years of journalism has made me a hero.
Save that word for those who deserve it, like my friend who fights terminal cancer with courage and dignity.
All the same, best wishes to all those working hard to keep newspapers running. They deserve congratulations.
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Wow. Quite possibly the most out-of-touch review of a year I’ve ever seen. And far to obsessed with his old employers and papers in the Midlands. There is life beyond the West Midlands.
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This review perfectly encapsulates why local newspapers are dying.
It is sentimental and holds as totems the traditional implementation details of local news, rather than highlighting people or products that might make news more engaging and accessible for new & future generations of readers. Those are the heroes that will guarantee jobs and the fulfilment of the services that newspapers currently fulfil.
Framing the issue as print vs digital is to miss the point. Digital is not in competition with print, unless you consider the definition of a newspaper to be in aspic. It is an opportunity to create a local newspaper that has a deeper engagement with its readers.
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Is this the same Alastair Machray who has turned the Liverpool Echo into a digital first newsroom? All stories appear online then are thrown in that other product they produce, whats is called? Oh yeah, the newspaper. That’s the fella.
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Congratulating those people defending, even creating, platforms which generate revenue looks sound enough to me. Happy New Year all.
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Unless I’m missing something (and it is early, by New Year’s Day standards) only the last three names are from the Midlands…
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Predominantly I’m a PR working in the trades. But over the holiday I met a guy for the first time ever and explained what I do.
He said to me – “you must be glad you are getting close to retirement. From what I see and read there will ne no printed media left soon!”
I assured him that times may well be changing but there is a robust support for ‘proper’ newspapers, ‘proper’ magazines and ‘proper’ reporters and photographers to fill them.
I hope I am not wrong.
Have as good a 2015 as possible,
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oh dear – it is all about personal opinion – Dyson does talk rubble sometimes but hey that’s life.
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Silly to say editors carry the can when things go wrong. It’s not true as Steve knows from his time at the Birmingham Mail. Managing directors are far more likely to get the chop. No editor would survive in 2010, let alone 2015, with steve’s attitude towards the Internet.
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But that’s the whole polnt, it’s his personal opinion.
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‘At number five is Lesley Potter, editor of the independently-owned Reading Chronicle…’
Not sure what your definition of ‘independently-owned’ encompasses but the Chronicle is owned by Romanes Media Group who are bankrolled by corporate finance. I doubt if Lesley ultimately has much say in the direction the paper takes but I wish them well as the town’s only print media.
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Wow, some Stockholm Syndrome on display here. The lovely new Sunday Echo launch coincided with the axe of the Liverpool Post and not long before the Crewe office was closed. The whole industry shines muck and calls it gold.
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The King Canute view of the world Dyson has is thankfully not shared by many others these days. Find it amazing he would celebrate something which led to someone leaving their job at the Coventry Telegraph. Call me old fashioned, but I thought a good ‘editorial floor’ was all about great stories, not rows. That sort of self-indulgence is one of the main reasons the industry got into a mess.
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I find myself in full agreement with ‘Oh dear’ on that one.
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While I’ve nothing against Bill Martin, I’m sure I won’t be the only employee of Devon & Cornwall Media who finds the mention of the WMN on Sunday a little hard to stomach.
Yes, it was great to see someone investing in print but, from thereon in, every indication is that the whole project has been an unmitigated disaster with sales, apparently, a fraction of what had been hoped for.
Of course, responsibility for this won’t rest with the MD, the marketing director or the publisher, and they’ll carry on ploughing more and more cash into this hopeless vanity project – I understand a new TV ad campaign is imminent – while top-notch journos, such as Su Carroll at the WMN, are deemed expensive luxuries and surplus to requirements.
Tell you what Steve, why not undertake some proper journalism and make a few enquiries about how many copies the WMN on Sunday is selling before you start dishing out completely unmerited gongs?!
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