The chief executive of the Learning and Skills Council, Mark Haysom, has been looking back on his time as a journalist in Scunthorpe.
The man now in charge of an £8bn-a-year budget said: “I arrived as an impoverished trainee reporter and lived in a flat above a fruit and veg shop in Frodingham Road. When I left, I had been editing the Scunthorpe Star for five years. The Star was a great weekly newspaper which used to give The Telegraph a run for its money.”

A new book from The Northern Echo, A Walk in the Park: Memories of Darlington, by the newspaper’s Memories column journalist Chris Lloyd, has gone on sale. It tells the story of the first municipal park in the north-east, and 50p from the sale of each book will go towards a historical information board in South Park.

Wartime pictures from the Exeter Blitz are proving to be the inspiration for a new sculpture tribute to those who lost their lives in the bombing. The original Princesshay Memorial Fountain was erected in 1992 to commemorate 50 years since the blitz, but it was a victim of the area’s redevelopment so sculptor Roger Dean is back at work on a replacement, using Echo pictures to recreate the scenes of devastation.

The Bromsgrove and Droitwich Standard’s anti-bullying campaign was launched to mark anti-bullying week in conjunction with the British Free Fighting Association, which aims to help children gain confidence and avoid conflict.

The annual meetings of the world’s press will be held in Cape Town, South Africa in 2007, the World Association of Newspapers has announced.
The board of WAN has approved a bid by the Newspaper Association of South Africa to host the 60th World Newspaper Congress, the 14th World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 2007, which will be held from June 3 to 6, 2007.