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Post forced to scrap five pages on deadline as trial collapses

News that a murder trial had come to a sudden end forced the Nottingham Evening Post to abandon five pages of coverage with 20 minutes to go until deadline.

The jury had been discharged in a hearing where two men were accused of shooting schoolgirl Danielle Beccan.

News staff, who were already into the next day’s overnight pages, pulled out the stops to ensure the final edition carried the new story – and four pages of other news in the absence of trial evidence.

Post deputy editor Marc Astley said: “We got the call and made the decision to pull the trial copy.

“We were advised by our lawyers that when an edition has gone out, the evidence can stay – but if the edition is still to be published, we would have to take the evidence out if we wanted to report the fact that the trial had been halted.

“It was a brilliant job by the people here. They turned around four pages and the edition was ready inside 35 minutes.”