Award-winning journalist Peter Sharples has left the Manchester Evening News to embark on a new career in freelance or corporate work.
Peter, who began his career as a junior on the weekly Blackburn Times in 1967, before moving to the Wolverhampton Express and Star, then the West Lancashire Evening Gazette and The Journal, in Newcastle, also worked outside the regional press industry but came to prominence at the MEN, where he was named personal finance journalist of the year three years in a row at the Regional Press Awards.

Former South Wales Echo journalist Nick Speed, now a reporter with HTV Wales, is to tie the knot in a civil ceremony with his partner, Cardiff Council leader Rodney Berman.
Coun Berman told the Echo: “We view our civil partnership as marking our commitment to each other.”

North West Enquirer editor Bob Waterhouse is to join the editors’ panel at the Newspaper Society’s Circulation, Editorial and Promotions Conference in Manchester at the end of this month.
The newspaper has yet to be launched but will cover a swathe of the north-west of England, including Carlisle, Liverpool, north Staffs, the Welsh borders and the Lake District.

Journalism students had their chance to grill a politician when Welwyn Hatfield MP Grant Shappe made himself available to University of Hertfordshire undergraduates.
Lecturer Sharon Maxwell-Magnus said: “It was a real chance for them as aspiring journalists to cut their teeth on a real politician, equipping them with the skills they will need in the real world of press and media.”

A Greenock Telegraph art display has proved such a success that the event is about to go on tour.
The popularity of the All Art Day exhibition at Greenock Town Hall prompted regional arts co-ordinator Jack Folley to put items out for public display across Inverclyde.

The Ipswich and Suffolk Press Ball is set to be a sell-out.
Organiser Nigel Pickover, editor of the Evening Star, said: “This is excellent news for the press ball and our chosen charity Disability Care Enterprise.” The target for fundraising this year is an ambitious £35,000, which would take the total raised in the past decade to more than £250,000.