Retired Elgin journalist Stewart McPherson, who spent most of his professional life in America, has died in the town's hospital aged 67, after a three-year battle against cancer.

He started his career as a trainee reporter on the former Elgin Courant and Courier weekly newspaper.

Then, after national service in the RAF he moved to the Press and Journal in Aberdeen as a sub-editor, where he worked for several years.

He later took up a similar position with the Daily Record in Glasgow, before moving to Fleet Street to work on the former Daily Sketch.

He was drawn to the US and became a senior night production editor on the New York Daily News, one of America's biggest-selling tabloids.

Stewart returned to Scotland in the early 1990s to rejoin the P&J in a part-time capacity and worked at the company's offices in Aberdeen, Inverness and Elgin for several years before retiring.

Lifelong journalist colleague and friend Alastair Bisset, now an Elgin councillor, said: "Stewart was a journalist of the old school – a stickler for accuracy and a role model for all younger journalists involved in late-night newspaper production."

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