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Regional daily editor quits for ‘personal reasons’

Kevin BoothNewspaper publisher Trinity Mirror has announced a second senior editorial departure in the space of 24 hours after a regional daily editor quit for “personal reasons.”

Kevin Booth, pictured, is leaving the Leicester Mercury at the end of next week after 18 months as editor.

He will be succeeded in the short-term by Rob Irvine, who has been seconded from his role at the Manchester Evening News to oversee the Mercury until a new editor is appointed.

The announcement of Kevin’s departure comes 24 hours after it was announced that Paul Brackley, editor of TM sister title the Cambridge News, would be leaving his role tomorrow.

Both the Mercury and the News were part of Local World until the company was bought by Trinity Mirror in a £220m deal last November.

Kevin took up the job of Mercury editor in September 2014 after a spell editing the Burton Mail. Earlier in his career he also edited the Peterborough Evening Telegraph and the York Evening Press.

His departure was announced to staff in Leicester today by TM’s East Midlands regional managing director David Simms.

David expressed his disappointment at the decision and hailed Kevin as a “passionate ambassador” for the paper.

He wrote:  “It is with some disappointment that I write to inform you that, for personal reasons, Kevin Booth will be leaving the business on April 22nd.

“Over the past 18 months, Kevin has successfully undertaken a redesign and re-launch of the Leicester Mercury, winning Regional Newspaper of the Year 2015 – an accolade for which the paper is once again shortlisted this year. Online audience figures have also doubled under Kevin’s editorship.

“It is without doubt that Kevin has been a passionate ambassador for the business and has made huge in-roads in developing the Mercury into a multi-media publishing operation.

“We wish him all the best in the future.”

Rob, who has been editor of the MEN since 2012 and is also regional editor-in-chief for TM’s North West region, will join the paper on Monday, 18 April.

In his statement, David said he would be taking the editor’s chair on an interim basis until a replacement editor is found, with the position due to be advertised both internally and externally.

Rob oversaw the introduction of a “digital first” approach to content at the MEN in 2013 as psrt of TM’s ‘Newsroom 3.1′ project.

Since then the Manchester website has established itself as the largest regional newspaper website in the UK reaching around 600,000 unique users every day via web and app.

24 comments

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  • April 14, 2016 at 3:09 pm
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    I wish this man well, and hope nothing is too amiss in his life, but you have to say it is a massive coincidence that his departure comes just a day after the Paul Brackley announcement. Any more senior editorial exits from this company in the next day or two would almost prompt the suspicion that something fundamental is going on there. Over to HTFP.

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  • April 14, 2016 at 3:16 pm
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    Why would an editor of one of Britain’s biggest regionals want a secondment to the Mercury? Seems strange to me. Is he keen to meet Jamie Vardy? Family in the city?

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  • April 14, 2016 at 3:20 pm
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    To lose one editor may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.

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  • April 14, 2016 at 3:30 pm
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    Whether being pushed or jumping it’s a sign of the times with editors becoming very much an endangered species in the regionals these days and with no sign of the exodus abating.
    Sad to say I am sure the big Chiefs will see it merely as a useful cost saving and a decent sized saving at that.

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  • April 14, 2016 at 3:55 pm
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    local editors are essential. Take a look at your local editorless weekly. Group editing and “regional hubs” don’t work quality-wise and content editors are often not very good and are just just production monkeys. Which leaves us with sloppy and badly written papers not even following basic journalism rules.
    I could cite a dozen examples from my JP weekly but the knackered staff deserve an editor not public slagging.

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  • April 14, 2016 at 4:22 pm
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    I’ve seen it happen a number of times here in the forgotten and darkened corners of Trinity Mirror.
    Usually, a senior editor turns up at the shoulder of your editor who then seems to slowly erode before the imminent departure announcement comes a few weeks later.
    Too many good editors lost this way.

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  • April 14, 2016 at 4:26 pm
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    Would the ‘personal reason’ be the gagging clause not to rock the boat in the redudancy offer? Mine was!

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  • April 14, 2016 at 4:41 pm
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    Trinity Mirror’s workforce now seems to be comprised of footsoldiers and about three or four supreme leaders who divide the country up beneath them, whatever happened to the concept of middle management? It’s like ancient Egypt. Couple of high paid people sat down eating toblerones while everyone else is outside pulling breeze blocks in the sun.

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  • April 14, 2016 at 4:45 pm
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    Oh dear. I sincerely hope that the “personal reasons” cited are not too serious and wish him luck. I’ve heard nothing but good things about Kevin for many years. Big loss to the Mercury.

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  • April 14, 2016 at 5:41 pm
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    The eds have all studied the business plans TM has concocted to justify the price it paid for Local World. And after a brief period of resistance the good guys n gals decide it’s not for them.

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  • April 14, 2016 at 5:49 pm
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    Ah yes the old ‘personal reasons’
    Let’s hope the reasons are genuinely personal as opposed to the ‘personally I’ve had enough’ variety

    Personally I suspect the latter

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  • April 14, 2016 at 7:13 pm
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    Only it’s not like that at all is it Jeff Jones. But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story will you?

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  • April 15, 2016 at 7:06 am
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    @Jeff Jones
    Really ?
    If you want to see middle management in all its top heavy glory visit Archant, the company is packed full of people with ‘manager’ ‘ deputy’ team leader’ ‘assistant’ or ‘chief’ in their title, attending ‘meetings’ and moving paper around yet actually doing nothing ,whilst the ‘foot soldiers ‘ become fewer and fewer with heavier and heavier workloads.
    Unless of course their policy of calling everyone a manager as opposed to giving them a pay rise makes it look on paper like its manager heavy.
    Just be careful what you wish for

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  • April 15, 2016 at 8:37 am
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    UWTL is quite right. Other companies than Archant are stuffed with useless tiers of management, mouse-clicking desk-jockeys with no specific media skills or vision. Corporations are called that precisely because they are stuffed with such finance-draining non-performers in the manner of civil service departments. And look at the machinations of our own Sir Humphrey Appleby’s, who ensure their fiefdoms are safe, while talented production editors, photographers, subs, and reporters – ie. those directly involved in revenue/profit-generation – are relentlessly turfed out. I reiterate my view that any future this sector may have will lie in small, cost-effective, nimble, 21st century outfits, where everyone is multi-skilled, more entrepreneurs than the traditional desk-bound time-servers of the last century. But it’ll take bottle, vision and a keen business sense, already in evidence in some areas, for it to work. That’s where the future lies – local news as a commodity marketed by top-heavy corporations is nearly dead and gone.

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  • April 15, 2016 at 9:04 am
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    So when do you start at The Northern Echo Kevin? ; )

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  • April 15, 2016 at 9:30 am
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    Loved working with you Boothy – at Derby and more recently as your deputy in Burton. Good luck mate in whatever comes next for you.

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  • April 15, 2016 at 9:40 am
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    UWTL pin points the crux of the matter and Dick is correct in where the future lies , you’ve only to look at the many superb regional papers and magazines being published and making good money across the uk by giving the local people what the larger dinosaurs in the RP have cast aside, the so called big four would do well to set up a meeting with some of the more successful independent players in regional publishing with a view to learning how to run a succesful, profitable and credible publishing operation in the 22nd century,however in reality it won’t happen for two reasons :
    1- they refer to any competitors as “the enemy ” and couldn’t bring themselves to accept they’re doing anything wrong and
    2- why would the successful publishers want to share their business success and skills with them?
    Whilst the uk regional press continues to dumb down, over staff its managerial levels and crash on regardless losing sight of its core purpose and moving with the times nothing will change.

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  • April 15, 2016 at 9:42 am
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    As a sideline, but on the same theme as editorial staff leaving their jobs, sad news coming out of Exeter this morning about a large round of redundancies.
    Thoughts are with you all.

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  • April 15, 2016 at 9:53 am
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    Good luck, Boothy. Great colleague, newsman and friend. It was worth all that hard work trying to prise you away from Stoke!

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  • April 15, 2016 at 10:04 am
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    I reiterate previous comments in the hope that the “personal reasons” are not genuine or serious and are merely legal speak for redundancy – with the aforementioned gagging clause. But it is surely no coincidence that his temporary replacement previously oversaw the introduction of a “digital first” approach to content at Manchester Evening News as part of Trinity Mirror’s ‘Newsroom 3.1′ project. Having experienced this first hand all I can say is be afraid, be very afraid.

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  • April 15, 2016 at 10:28 am
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    Doesn’t Leicester Mercury come under the remit of regional editor-in-chief Steve Hall? As a very respected editor, he’d do a great job – if, of course, the budgets stack up.

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  • April 15, 2016 at 10:34 am
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    All of my comments re the future and so on are made in the context of Paul and Kevin’s departures, and I haven’t lost sight of that. Judging by the testimonials here, the industry has jettisoned two experienced and well-respected operators (but probably too well-paid for someone’s liking), which suggests TM is preparing for a future where their level of expertise, loyalty and commitment is not a requirement (the suits will look puzzled at those three words). I have visions of offices full of early twenty-somethings on zero-hours contracts dropping UGC and witless press releases into pre-drawn boxes and calling that local journalism, while legions of pointless suits waste time at nothing useful/profit-generating elsewhere in the building. Anyway, Paul, Kevin, best of luck for the future; maybe you should put your heads together and take note of what JAMES (above) says about the future. It’s there waiting for those who dare; those left in this wreckage are only waiting for one thing now.

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  • April 15, 2016 at 11:25 am
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    To be honest I no longer subscribe to the notion that the newspaper industry has been destroyed by the internet, because the level of incompetence and outright destruction wrought upon it suggests its more of a concerted effort by the neoliberal class to emasculate the watchman.

    Turn the clock back ten years for instance, and it would have been journalism high treason to pull a story to appease an advertiser, now top nationals are doing it, and entire teams of ‘journalists’ have been set up to write stories that ‘bridge the gap’ between business and editorial.

    All of the top brass left are either from advertising backgrounds, or if they’re from editorial backgrounds they’re company men through and through.

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  • April 15, 2016 at 10:47 pm
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    Kevin, I don’t know anything about the “personal reasons” referred to (but that’s not stopped everyone speculating) but I do know you are a proper newspaper man and I wish you all the best.

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