The Heywood Advertiser has been praised for its work after a man was jailed for two years.

He was sentenced to two years in prison after admitting his attack on an off licence in April.

Shopkeeper David Connolly was attacked with CS gas during the attempted robbery.

Police were able to track him down after a reader read about the attack and rang the police with the suspect’s name.

The culprit’s sister also saw CCTV footage of the attack on the Advertiser website and on Channel M, its sister TV station. Both are part of parent company MEN Media.

Before passing sentence at Bolton Crown Court, Judge William Morris was shown an Advertiser cutting describing the effect the assault had on the victim and his wife.

Advertiser editor Paul Harrison said: “I think this shows that the media still has a role to play in helping the police.

“Having a website and a TV station made the appeal even more effective as it meant we could show CCTV footage of the attack, something we wouldn’t have been able to do a few years ago.”

DC John Carter, who worked on the case, said: “We would like to thank the Advertiser as it has been a big help in solving this crime.

“We had exhausted all our lines of enquiry and had nowhere else to go on this case until the paper ran an appeal for information again and we released the CCTV footage.

“Once the appeal had been run we got an anonymous phone call from someone saying they had seen it in the Advertiser and gave us the name.

“They even quoted the page they had seen the story on so we knew it was that paper.”

“This shows how the police and the press can work together and I will definitely consider using the press in this way again.”