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NUJ honours journalist who spent nearly 40 years with regional daily

Pete LazenbyA reporter who spent almost 40 years with a regional daily has been honoured by the National Union of Journalists.

The NUJ’s Leeds and Wakefield branch organised a special presentation to Pete Lazenby, left, formerly of the Yorkshire Evening Post.

Pete spent many years as a key figure in NUJ branch activities in Leeds, as well as being long-term father of chapel at the YEP at a time when the paper employed more than 100 journalists.

He started his career as a teenager on the Wharfedale and Airedale Observer, based in Otley, where he spent five-and-a-half years before moving to the Leeds-based YEP.

Since leaving the YEP in 2012, he has covered the North of England for the Morning Star.

Pete said: “I really do love my union, and the people who make it work, generation after generation, new activists coming through, carrying on the struggles, not just for decent wages, but for the truth, resisting greedy, rapacious, corrupt media moguls determined to feed millions of readers nothing but a combination of lies and titillation.”

NuJ President Tim Dawson described Pete as the “Leeds dissenter” at the presentation.

He said: “With his ornate moustache and flat vowels, Pete Lazenby is well known activist throughout the NUJ. He has been a stalwart of collective action, however his greatest achievement was as joint father of chapel, maintaining union organisation at the Yorkshire Post/Yorkshire Evening Post through the dark days of de-recognition. He has also been a well-spring of newsroom common sense in many of our internal debates.”

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