A former weekly newspaper editor has been elected as a councillor in the town he moved to after calling time on his career.
Paul Mortimer, left, was editor of the Staffordshire Newsletter from 1996-2003 and then the Richmond and Twickenham times from 2003-2008.
After a stint as chief sub-editor on the Bucks Free Press, he called time on his 42-year career in 2009 and moved to Tiverton, Devon.
Now he has become one of three new members elected to Tiverton Town Council following an extraordinary general meeting held this week.
In a presentation to members, Paul said he believed he had a good understanding of how town councils worked from his time as the editor of a local weekly newspaper in Staffordshire and believed he could adjust what he had learnt to the decision-making process in Tiverton.
“I have become involved in the community through working to help the Portas team and getting involved with the Creative Hub running creative writing classes,” he added.
Paul started as a trainee reporter on the Staffordshire Advertiser in 1967 and then went on to work on the sports desks of the Express and Star and Birmingham Mail between 1972 and 1982.
He joined Lionel Pickering’s Trader Group Newspapers as production editor and editor of the Tamworth Trader before joining the Staffordshire Newsletter.
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Good old Paul – he should make a late bid to gain entry to the Western Morning News Power 150 list of the most influential folk in the West Country. If the Western Morning News’ Managing Director can be placed at number 3 then there’s room for everyone!!
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I think the WMN team were concentrating too much this Sunday on placing their own MD at number 3 in the Power 150 list (listed as more important than a man who runs a £16billion power company!) to remember to put a headline on page 71. Or, indeed, remember to wait until the ad had loaded on page 69 before sending it to the printers. The resulting blank spaces at least gave me some scribble space for the much vaunted giant puzzles they missed from the first issue!!
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Need more reporters reporting from council chambers not ex journos ON councils! Personal coverage pathetic on many papers. Councils need more scrutiny not less.
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The WMN on Sunday has been a terrible disappointment and I suspect the sales figures reflect that, hence the absence of any news emanating from the DC Media management team when compared to the virulent marketing we couldn’t avoid in the run-up to launch.
What a pity that what could have been a bold, brave, refreshing move for regional media appears to have been stymied by witless management intervention (see the dominance of advertising from day one) and a clear lack of single-minded editorial focus. This is a paper in need of an editor, I am afraid, not the committee which is so clearly running matters.
Sadly, despite the public headlines proclaiming it was backing print, Local World is patently NOT interested in editorial quality; it’s interest, in the shape of local management down here, and its executive team in London, is short term profit leading to personal gain for those on the top loaded bonus schemes. Otherwise, it would have invested serious money and experience into this launch and not the half-baked, ever changing catastrophe we have witnessed in the month since launch.
I gather hands are being rubbed at revenues coming in – and with costs patently as low as can be got away with profits will follow. But over the medium term they have blown it…and probably chipped away at the weekday WMN’s credibility too.
Is it too late for the management to get in a proper editor, commission some decent, authoritative writers, tighten design rules and ditch the hideous, pointless graphics spreads which some marketing whizz clearly opined were a good idea? We can but hope….
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