A regional daily has celebrated 50 years since one of its writers began working for the paper.
Mike Amos has reached the milestone at the Northern Echo and its now-defunct sister paper the Northern Despatch, where he began working on 30 August 1965.
Coincidentally for somebody who has now notched up his half century, one of Mike’s first jobs at the Despatch was to compile a list of local cricketers who had scored 50 runs that weekend.
Since then, Mike has won countless awards and was honoured with the MBE for services to journalism in 2006.
While he retired from full-time journalism at the Echo in 2006, he still contributes two columns to the paper each week.
The Echo ran a double page spread on Mike in Friday’s edition, which was plugged on the front page, pictured below.
Editor Peter Barron said: “Mike’s contribution to The Northern Echo and the regional press is unprecedented.
“For someone to give half a century of service to one newspaper is an astonishing achievement and his contributions to the paper are as valuable as ever.
“He is indisputably the best journalist I have had the pleasure to work with and to learn from.”
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Congratulations to Mike Amos. I am coming up to my 50th anniversary in journalism but for different publications and now, at the age of 67, am still doing occasional freelance work for local papers in this area. Where has the time gone?
Trevor Hayes
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MIKE Amos is rightly a legend. I worked in Darlington during the early 2000s at the Darlington & Stockton Times in neighbouring offices to the Northern Echo. While Mike won’t know me but everyone knew of him. He wrote about a wide range of topics with credibility, passion and style, and a respect for his subject and readers – from north-east sport to church services and grassroots community life. His office was lined with books, I recall. A well-read, intelligent, entertaining journalist who symbolises many good things about the north-east and quality journalism.
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