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New editor aims for ‘sustainable and bright’ future at regional daily

Gavin ThompsonA new regional daily editor has been unveiled after his predecessor left in a restructure.

Bristol Post assistant editor (business) Gavin Thompson, pictured left, will take up the editorship of the Western Daily Press on Monday.

As reported on HTFP last month, the WDP’s Rob Stokes was one of two editors to leave former Local World titles in the West Country as part of a restructure by new owner Trinity Mirror.

Lynne Fernquest, of the Bath Chronicle, has also departed as part of TM’s plans to cut around 14 jobs in the region.

As part of the proposals, the WDP’s website will also be incorporated into that of the Bristol Post.

Gavin has served in his current role with the Post for three years, and spent the four years before that as the newspaper’s chief sub-editor.

He said: “The Western Daily Press is produced by a talented and experienced team of journalists and I’m excited about leading them as we work to ensure the newspaper has a sustainable future as bright as its remarkable past.

“To achieve that we need to deliver a consistently brilliant daily read which reflects the interests and passions of the people of the West. I can’t wait to get started.”

Prior to joining the Post, Gavin worked as a reporter and on news desk at the Hull Daily Mail, Aberdeen’s Press & Journal and Gloucestershire Echo.

He started his career as a trainee reporter on the Somerset County Gazette.

Mike Norton, Trinity Mirror editor-in-chief for Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Dorset said: “Gavin brings both editorial and commercial expertise to the Western Daily Press. He will be a real asset to the paper.”

Sarah Pullen, the company’s managing director for the region, added: “I’m delighted to welcome Gavin in his new role. Over the past three years, Gavin has been a great ambassador for the Bristol business community.

“He has ensured that we have been highly connected in business and that we are the first to turn to in a competitive marketplace.

“Gavin has also been on the ‘editors of the future’ programme so we’re proud to promote one of our talented team internally.”

20 comments

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  • June 2, 2016 at 4:09 pm
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    “Exciting” – oh yes. “Brilliant” – a word heard more than once from a senior TM exec very recently. “Sustainable” – let’s flipping well hope so. Good luck, Gavin.

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  • June 2, 2016 at 4:11 pm
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    ‘Left in a restructure’ sounds like a Springsteen album.

    The office was jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive

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  • June 2, 2016 at 4:16 pm
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    WDP
    Eric Price
    The Boy in The Bath
    Those were the days.

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  • June 2, 2016 at 6:07 pm
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    Not very is the answer ‘Archant lifer’
    Anyone with the word ‘editor’ in their title is already under the spotlight and on the way out as the new buzz word is ‘content’ which I believe replaces ‘editor’ , so if you’re an editor as opposed to a content director or content chief etc etc your days are surely numbered.
    Even more so if you’ve been in the job a long time or have to ask readers what’s wrong with your paper

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  • June 2, 2016 at 8:03 pm
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    I’m sure he is a talented and able chap. That said his appointment will not make a scrap of difference to circulation figures ! Wish it would !

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  • June 3, 2016 at 12:15 am
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    Delighted, delighted, delighted. The only thing TM bigwigs aren’t ‘delighted’ about is being routinely slagged off in the comments section on HTFP. But if you can’t stand the heat..

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  • June 3, 2016 at 7:13 am
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    I see someone is ‘on point’ weaving editorial AND commercial into their statement.

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  • June 3, 2016 at 7:27 am
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    Well done Gavin, very well deserved. Will be supporting and buying the WDP. Good luck with it all. Sarah

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  • June 3, 2016 at 8:03 am
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    Good luck to Gavin – I am sure he will do his best, and I really hope this project is a success.
    I note the old familiar process, though: new editor is wheeled out to give positive quotes. That bit is genuine. Next, months, sometimes weeks later, we have an HTFP story saying the plug is being pulled, or the operation scaled down. The editor is silent/muzzled/’pursuing new opportunities outside the company’, and instead we get the sterile, executive line, e.g. “Sales and audience figures, while initially buoyant, have experienced a downturn and are now running at disappointing and unsustainable levels, blahdy blah blah…”

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  • June 3, 2016 at 8:23 am
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    As someone who counts Gavin as a friend, colleague and godparent to my daughter, I am thrilled by his appointment. Like a newsy Muralitharan, the WDP is in safe, quietly revolutionary hands. Congrats Gav.

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  • June 3, 2016 at 10:30 am
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    Interesting to read that the new editor has been “unveiled” . This suggests he is a clone of the real chap and the sign of things to come.

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  • June 3, 2016 at 11:22 am
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    Nothing creative, bright or imaginative about the incoming editor’s quote:
    He said: “The Western Daily Press is produced by a talented and experienced team of journalists and I’m excited about leading them as we work to ensure the newspaper has a sustainable future as bright as its remarkable past.

    How many times have I read that or a similar phrase from an incoming editor? It wasn’t by any chance quote No. 34 from TM’s stock of quotes, was it? Pity he couldn’t have come up with something more original. Couldn’t he have told us about his plans for the paper – or aren’t there any?

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  • June 3, 2016 at 12:43 pm
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    What does a ‘restructure’ mean? Why is there no acknowledgement that these papers are on the edge? How will they arrest a 15% sales decline? As for digital, is the future really persuading morons to click on salacious stories on Facebook, many of which are not local?

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  • June 3, 2016 at 1:10 pm
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    Sue: “As for digital” see the breaking story on here about Archant’s London outfit, boasting a million visitors or something last year, though it sure wasn’t a million quid. Says it all really.

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  • June 3, 2016 at 4:13 pm
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    Let’s hope Gavin doesn’t go the way if many other editors who have been quoted on HTFP one week lauding the new way and expressing excitement about a new launch only to reappear X months later as part of a restructure or closure when declining sales and readerships fail to be reversed
    There’s a real pattern emerging in 2016 and it usually starts with acstory just like this and ends , well,we all know how it ends

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  • June 3, 2016 at 5:20 pm
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    Stick to the basics, cover everything that moves and he has a chance. Fancy redesign, lifestyle features and 1980s-style Sun headlines and it’s game over!

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  • June 6, 2016 at 11:07 am
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    Archantlifer asks how sustainable editors are these days?

    Totally sustainable is the answer to that. They are grown in a field just off the M40 near Banbury where they are genetically modified to enable to spout the appropriate TM, Archant, JP, et al platitudes when they are harvested and replanted in a newsroom to fulfill their utterly impossible task of sustaining the unsustainable.

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