Two new publishers have been appointed at Newsquest centres in the North West of England.

Derek King, (left), is the new publisher at Newsquest (Merseyside) while Nuala O'Rourke takes up the same role at Messenger Newspapers in Cheshire. Both positions report to Chris Hughes, regional MD at Newsquest (North West).

Derek joins Newsquest having gained experience at both the Nottingham Evening Post and Express Newspapers.

His background is in sales and marketing where, for five years, he was deputy sales and marketing director for the Express Group before moving to Scotland as general manager.

More recently he has been a founding director of a marketing company delivering electronic magazines to corporate intranets.

Nuala (right) has worked for Newsquest for 17 years, starting as a sales representative on the Messenger titles in Stockport.

She then became sales supervisor, title manager, deputy sales manager and group sales manager for the Messenger group. In 1999, she took overall responsibility for leaflet sales for Cheshire/Merseyside and in 2001 was promoted to group sales manager for Messenger and Merseyside, adding the Wirral Globe to her responsibilities.

In 2002, she played a major part in the successful launch of the award-winning Lifestyle Magazine in both centres and in 2004 was behind the launch of a third edition of the magazine into Wilmslow.