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Regional publisher completes new editor line-up

A regional publisher has completed its line-up of new ‘community editors’ with two more senior appointments.

Archant Norfolk is shaking up its branch office structure with a series of community editors taking charge of the content-generating operation in towns across its patch.

The latest appointments see Amy Smith, pictured below, become editor of her hometown title, the Beccles and Bungay Journal, as well as providing content for the Eastern Daily Press from across the Waveney Valley.

Amy, 23, is replacing David Lennard, who is leaving in late February after more than 40 years with Archant.

AmySmithBBJ

She said: “I am thrilled and delighted to edit the much-loved BBJ, a newspaper that has always been an important part of my life.”

Amy moved to Archant in September 2013 after three years as a reporter at the Johnston Press-owned Diss Express.

Meanwhile David Bale, 47, becomes chief reporter for the EDP in west Norfolk, overseeing the paper’s Kings Lynn patch.

David has worked at the Bucks Herald, Aylesbury, the Kentish Times, and the Lynn News as well as the EDP and the Norwich Evening News.

Making the announcements editor-in-chief, Nigel Pickover, said: “This takes to seven the recent changes in leadership in our branch office network and sets us on course for exciting content opportunities across our platforms of print, web, mobile, tablet and television.”

“This is an exciting time for our great community editors as we seek to provide exquisite content which will help us thrive on both our weekly titles and in their sister newspaper, the EDP,” said Nigel.

The previous set of four community editor appointments, announced in October, was covered on HTFP here.

The complete list, which also includes the existing weekly editors in North Norfolk and Great Yarmouth, is:

Beccles: Amy Smith
Cromer: Richard Batson
Dereham: Adam Lazzari
Diss: Anthony Carroll
Fakenham & Wells: Chris Bishop
Great Yarmouth: Anne Edwards
King’s Lynn: David Bale
Lowestoft: Andrew Papworth
Thetford: Andrew Fitchett

16 comments

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  • January 15, 2015 at 11:12 am
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    Is the “content-generating operation” what we used to call reporting? Good luck to Amy and her operators and let’s hope they harvest some stunning content.

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  • January 15, 2015 at 11:54 am
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    Best of luck everyone. Good to see content-generating operators (or reporters, if you like) based in their own communities, rather on some isolated trading estate. What a novel idea! (removes tongue from cheek).

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  • January 15, 2015 at 12:41 pm
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    Nigel. Did you really mean exquisite content? Amy is only 23 but the paper has been an important part of her life, she says. Good luck to her but she seems rather young to be an editor of any kind. Probably very good at tweeting, videos, uploading web, Facebook etc, which is a key qualification now. Seriously.

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  • January 15, 2015 at 1:11 pm
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    idon’tbelieveit: my thoughts entirely when I first read the piece but somewhat unfair on Amy. Who are you to judge the quality of her work? It’s not her decision to do away with experience.

    I’m sure David Lennard is an excellent ‘content generator’, but it doesn’t always follow that just because someone’s done a job for a long time, it makes them good at it. I’ve worked with some pretty dire people over the decades and they didn’t get any better.

    Good luck to both David and Amy, although I reckon Amy will need it more!

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  • January 15, 2015 at 5:00 pm
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    I’m personally looking forward to Amy being the new editor. I’m sure she will bring a new lease of light to the papers which others could not bring! Good luck Amy do not take any notice of the negative comments… I have no doubt you prove them all wrong!

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  • January 15, 2015 at 7:46 pm
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    Isabelle, you’re absolutely right. Best of luck to Amy, it’s a stunning achievement and if I was her, her family and friends I’d be extremely proud.

    I don’t think any negative comments can be possibly aimed at her, how could they be? Nobody on here knows her personally, I think the comments are more reflective of general cynicism about the motivations of the industry and, particularly, upper management.

    People have seen experienced sub editors replaced with graduate ‘copy editors’ and the like, where the decision has compromised quality purely for financial reasons, so are generally wary of these kinds of changes.

    I was briefly made editor of my weekly when I was 28, I thought that was young but the move was made because my boss had been axed, as had his boss, and indeed HIS boss, management had been completely decapitated and I was left to hold the baby with no training and virtually no support, that’s what the industry had become.

    Also, as a side point, I believe being a good journalist is like being a good copper, I think the best ones are the ones who’ve ‘been around’ a bit and have some age and life experience under their belt. When I left the industry there were only a handful of us in our 30s and 40s at the paper (a major regional daily) the rest were recent graduates, There were all very sharp but didn’t have a lot of general knowledge or life experience. Their view of, say, something like a foodbank story was wholly different to mine – as someone who had been on the dole and worked in a lot of frankly rubbish jobs.

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  • January 15, 2015 at 7:57 pm
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    What precisely is a “community editor”?
    By all means have a ‘motoring editor’ or ‘arts editor’ or whatever, as they can look after then own small section(s) but where does this leave ‘community’? Are they telling us that only a small part of the paper deals with the community?
    What precisely is meant by “a series of community editors taking charge of the content-generating operation”?
    How many community editors make a series?
    Why do we need a series of them?
    What is a content-generating operation?
    Some of us are so old-fashioned that we still have an editor who can still send a member of the team (a ‘reporter’, if you like) to cover local stories.
    Maybe I’m just getting old……

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  • January 15, 2015 at 7:58 pm
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    …But I should add: best wishes and good luck to Amy and the rest of the team, whatever they actually do.

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  • January 16, 2015 at 7:46 am
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    Yes, best wishes to Amy, who is an excellent and hard working young journalist and deserves her chance. Look, the traditional role of “Editor” has gone. As I read the appointment, Amy will be in charge of providing content across the formats. That means, among other things, a good understanding of social media. The experience that Jeff Jones talks about is brilliant and traditional but is it needed in shedloads any more? The readers who appreciate that kind of experience are dying or not buying. We need younger readers to replace them. Time for younger people nearer the top, perhaps. I always remember a very bright young work experience girl, who I liked enormously, telling me (by that time almost a crusty old fart) my paper was full of “old people writing about dead people”. Atta girl.

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  • January 16, 2015 at 10:52 am
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    Up North

    I believe community editors basically harvest UGC and Facebook/Twitter stories.

    Facebook can be a decent source of news when it comes to people launching campaigns etc, but they’re few and far between.

    Idle Rich – I take your point to an extent, but don’t really believe the online audience is comparable to those who do buy the paper. They don’t value the paper for a start (most comments under a new story are often derogatory towards the journalist or the paper itself), and it doesn’t really take any loyalty to like or share a story on social media.

    I think people aren’t buying because the papers are getting worse. Weekly newspapers shouldn’t be lumped in with dailies and particularly nationals, which report – in theory – breaking news (a day late), weekly papers are about the community.

    When we axed our nostalgia correspondent we lost close to a thousand readers overnight. I’d rather have those thousand than 10,000 Facebook followers who just share your latest picture of a kid jumping in a puddle with wellies on.

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  • January 16, 2015 at 5:47 pm
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    Thanks to Jeff Jones for the kind explanation of what a community editor’s job entails.
    I think Jeff is right that this sort of content is of limited value to a typical local paper, if only because people who like Facebook stories will probably see the story on Facebook before it would appear in the local weekly.
    I also think that Jeff is right about local papers getting worse. It’s not just ‘details’ such as knowing the difference between likely and probably, or principle and principal, or even it’s and its – the content itself is suspect. Page after page about what’s on TV. Weak features about non-local subjects. We all know the sort of thing.
    One regional paper axed its local correspondents, ostensibly to save money. They were paid £1.67 for each short (ready to use pieces emailed through – not just leads). Some readers noticed the loss of local content, sales dropped, and who knows what the future holds for that title.

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  • January 16, 2015 at 6:50 pm
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    As Amy’s aunt and uncle we are extremely proud and wish her all the best in her role as community editor and know that she has worked hard for this role.

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  • January 17, 2015 at 3:44 pm
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    It’s increasingly not uncommon for younger journalists to take editors’ roles, particularly given the scale of cuts. Rather like Jeff Jones, I ended up being put in temporary charge of my old weekly paper for six months. It was a case of the news editor being made redundant and my editor subsequently being shunted elsewhere, so I ended up in charge by default.

    At the time I’d reported on the patch for six years, so I had a good understanding of the paper, but I received no extra training or any sort of guidance from senior management. Frankly without the support of a very decent sub editor, who worked remotely, I wouldn’t have got the paper out each week.

    Perhaps more troubling is this increasing tendency towards “community editing”. This often just means processing photos for a picture spread of readers’ dogs or trying to whittle page leads out of submitted press releases. As a means of providing quality journalism, holding the powers that be to account, it’s somewhat lacking.

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  • January 18, 2015 at 4:27 pm
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    First job will be sorting out that God-awful masthead if she’s got any sense.

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  • January 21, 2015 at 10:00 am
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    It’s my hometown too. I grew up with the Journal. My dad was chief reporter for many years. The last time I looked at it a couple of months ago it was a shadow of the newspaper that used to come home with him every week – very thin and looking as though it had been written by trainees for the most part.
    But it’s the same story all over the country so I wish Amy luck all the same.

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