A former compositor who took his chance to retrain as a journalist has been rewarded with the top job at a weekly paper.

Former production worker Russell Cook will take up the hotseat at the Lowestoft Journal on March 18, where he will take over from Barry Hartley.

Russell is currently deputy editor (news) at the Evening Star, Ipswich, after choosing a new career in 1986.

It has taken 16 years but Russell (left) has become one of an unusual breed of people… to have gone from the production floor, through retraining and eventually an editorship.

He said: “I had this opportunity half way through my life to follow a new career and I jumped at the chance.

“It was a really intensive 12-week training course we all went through, especially shorthand, but I was determined to make a go of it.

“At the end of it, and with the prof test under my belt, I felt I had really achieved something… but now to get this new job is a dream.”

He began as an apprentice comp with the East Anglian Daily Times Company, now Eastern Counties Newspapers, at its commercial printing branch The Suffolk Press where he eventually became indentured at the age of 21.

With the introduction of direct input and dramatic changes in the industry he took the plunge with five other colleagues in 1986 to be retrained as a journalist.

They undertook an intensive in-house training course and he passed the National Council for the Training of Journalists proficiency test in October 1988.

He became deputy chief reporter at the newspaper’s Felixstowe office, chief reporter in Woodbridge and eventually chief reporter in the Ipswich head office.

During that period he also worked for the EADT’s Mercury Series where he became well-known for his Action Man columns, carrying out a whole variety of exploits.

By 1993 he had progressed to the position of news editor at The Star and three years later was appointed to his current role.

Preparing to move on, he said: “It will be a wrench leaving people I have become very close to over those many years and odd not walking into a building I have been coming to, on and off, for the past 36 years.

“But I now have this wonderful opportunity to move forward and I’m really excited about the prospect of taking over a well respected weekly newspaper which has and will continue to play a major role in the community of Lowestoft.”

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