Former Rutland & Stamford Mercury editor Tor Clark is setting up a new journalism degree at De Montfort University in Leicester.

As senior lecturer in journalism he will be working on the new three-year joint honours degree, ready for the first students arriving in the autumn.

He joins an established journalism team at De Montfort, which currently delivers the highly thought-of and successful NCTJ-accredited postgraduate diploma in journalism, which has produced many journalists now working in the media across the UK.

He said: "I'm really looking forward to my new role. It's exciting to be in at the start of something which I think is going to be very successful.

"After 16 years in newspapers it was a bit of a wrench to leave, but the opportunity was just too good to miss, and hopefully I'll be able to keep my hand in with freelance work in the future.

"I've been very lucky to have worked with some great journalists over the years and I now hope to do my bit to turn out some more for the future from De Montfort University."

Before editing The Mercury, Tor had spent three and a half years as editor of its sister paper, the Harborough and Lutterworth Mail, where he had previously been deputy editor.

He began his career in free newspapers in Norfolk and Suffolk, before moving to the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph in Kettering and Corby in 1989.

In five and a half years there he worked as a reporter, news editor and sub-editor, before making the move to Market Harborough in 1994, where under his editorship, it achieved all-time record circulation figures.

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