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Regional newspapers all over the country took part in a celebration of the industry last week.

Local Newspaper Week, organised by The Newspaper Society, prompted daily and weekly papers into action by organising events or promoting their work.

Sponsored supplements, features on successful campaigns, the chance to be editor for a day and events and competitions filled the pages.

The Hull Daily Mail highlighted its Customer Circles, which gather readers together to look at key topics and their presentation in the paper. In most of the key topics the paper’s performance now exceeds the expectation of the readers.

Editor John Meehan said: “It is vital we stay in touch with the needs of our readers and our Customer Circles are the ideal way to do this. They allow us to talk face to face with the people this newspaper really belongs to.”

In Bolton, classes from a local school visited the offices of the Evening News to learn about newspaper production on a behind-the-scenes tour. Newspaper staff, in turn, went back to the school to run a series of workshops.

The Peterborough Evening Telegraph focused on its librarian Alan Cleaver, who has been with the company since 1955.

He has seen 15 editors come and go, and filed the work of more than 200 reporters. He’s also seen the transition of the paper from black-and-white to colour production.

The article compared him with new reporter Lyndsay Emmett, who has been there for a week and has already met local and national MPs and climbed to the top of the city’s cathedral.

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