The deputy editor of a regional daily has lamented the end of newspaper printing on his patch after 300 years.

As previously reported on HTFP, the Worcester News printing presses in Hylton Road closed over the summer with the paper and its sister weekly titles now being printed in Oxford.

The move brought to an end a printing tradition in the city dating back more than 300 years to the publication of Berrow’s Worcester Journal – often regarded as the world’s oldest newspaper.

Now John Wilson, deputy editor of the News, has penned a first-person piece voicing his sadness at the closure.

Writing on his personal blog, John, pictured above, said it would be the first time in 30 years where he would not be working for a daily newspaper printed where it is also written and edited.

He added: “It was inevitable. Not as many newspapers are printed now than in their heyday, so fewer presses are needed. Those that remain are the biggest and most technologically advanced. They take in their stride the workload once handled by a dozen smaller presses.

“The move makes the Worcester News more efficient, and that is a vital quality in an industry grappling with the tumultuous changes unleashed by the internet.

“But I am terribly sad. I am so sorry to see the men who worked on the press, some of them for many years, lose their jobs.”

John’s career has also seen him work at Newcastle-based dailies The Chronicle and The Journal, Stoke-based daily The Sentinel, the Bristol Post, Western Daily Press and Derby Telegraph.

He added: “None are now printed on the premises. The loss of this press, though, feels worse. It’s about history.

“Berrow’s Worcester Journal, the sister paper of the Worcester News, was first published here in the city in 1690, though it was then called the Worcester Post-man, and is the world’s oldest continuously published newspaper (it is also now printed in Oxford, and has been for some time).

“I treasured that connection with the past, with the pioneering successors of William Caxton who raced to bring news to the people once the freedom of the Press had been won from the Stuart monarchy. That link is broken now. The sound of the press at full speed no longer rumbles through our building. A pulse has been stilled.

“I have peered for the last time into that press hall to marvel at a daily publishing miracle and smell air warmed by electric motors and thick with the aromas of newsprint, oil and ink.

“Even after so long in the business it retained the power to enthral me. I was not alone. Over the years I have watched parties of visitors being led through our building and told the secrets of how newspapers are made.

“They listened politely, of course, but what they were really here for was to see that mighty press; to hear the noise and be thrilled witnesses to the birth of tomorrow’s headlines.

“It was there that the spell of newspapers was strongest, and the reason why so many of us who work on them have been bewitched forever.”