A Midlands regional daily became one of the few papers in the country to carry Raoul Moat’s suicide on the front page of its Saturday morning edition.

The Staffordshire-based Sentinel beat the nationals to the 1.15am news of the fugitive gunman’s death following a five-hour stand-off with police.

Night editor Paul Dutton stayed at his post until 3.45am to make sure the paper was up-to-date on the news stands, with the headline “Britain’s most wanted man kills himself.”

The result was a single column, full drop story on page one together with an in-depth piece on page four.

By contrast all the national titles had gone to print with their stories when Moat was still negotiating with police.

Sentinel editor Mike Sassi said: “I’d like to think this illustrates the benefits of having a proper late news desk, genuine late subs – and an experienced, professional leader at the heart of our news-gathering process.”

Another regional daily to beat the nationals on Moat’s death was the Manchester Evening News which prints its main Saturday edition at 4am. It carried reports and pictures on pages one and two.

Assistant editor Paul Coates said: “The MEN frequently makes use of its main edition print time to get in major news and sport stories that the nationals miss.”

The Express and Star, Wolverhampton, which still prints in the morning rather than overnight, also carried news of Moat’s death on Saturday morning.

Read Steve Dyson’s blog on HTFP tomorrow for more on its coverage of the gunman’s demise.

Comments

Sign of the Times (13/07/2010 09:19:13)
And the Sentinel in Staffordshire needed to carry this story why exactly? Is the story on its patch? No. Is it a story readers wouldn’t have been aware of through other sources? No. It’s just another regional thinking it’s a national and jumping on the coat-tails of a big story happening far away.

North Easterner (13/07/2010 09:27:05)
I’d much rather HTFP did a summary piece on how the North-Eastern papers handled the story – very well, since you asked – instead of championing the efforts of a paper which had no real interest in the story. If Mike Sassi put a late night in, well, good for him. I hope he took a lieu day to rest his hand from patting himself on the back.

Se4bastianFaults (13/07/2010 09:30:43)
Proper evening papers have always carried a page of national news; a hangover from the days when newspapers carried real news.
The two papers mentioned are staffed by proper reporters who cut their teeth on local papers and can spot a news story from five miles off.
The fact that other media carry it too won’t, and should not, stop them from doing it. The proof will be in the sales figures and anyone who thinks they should not have bothered should not be working in newspapers..

North Easterner (13/07/2010 09:35:07)
OK, Se4bastianFaults, I see your point. But if this is a daily newspaper’s bread and butter, what’s with the tubthumping and backslapping? Surely it’s just a normal case of pushing the deadline back for a late breaking story?

Jelly C (13/07/2010 10:39:54)
“Regional paper criticised for carrying latest news” – you couldn’t make it up.

Nick Turner (13/07/2010 11:20:45)
Strange how the times have changed that it is deemed newsworthy that a newspaper is able to report on the latest news.
We carried it too. That’s what newspapers do isn’t it?

Arthur Spooner (13/07/2010 13:57:35)
Running in some PA copy down a single stick is not exactly difficult is it?
But at least The Sentinel were trying to do things properly.
I recently worked on a paper which didn’t bother to cover a city’s magistrates and crown court because; A) The group editor said it was a ‘waste of time’ and B) No one had shorthand, apart from one girl who only worked part-time.

Steve Dyson (13/07/2010 14:07:17)
My view, Nick Turner (me old Preston college mate!) is that editors SHOULD be proud of their accomplishments. Especially at a time when many onwers (not all but many) don’t seem to give a monkey’s about what ends up as a splash, and are sometimes too quick to just shrug over whether a ‘live’ late night story is in the paper the next day or not. I’m fascinated and inspired by editors and newsdesks who continue to work late and extra to ensure that the paid-for print edition has the best chance of selling with up-to-date news. “The bestest, the latest and the mostest,” as one of my late mentors used to say.

Subbed Out (13/07/2010 14:33:55)
Going the extra mile is all well and good but I doubt a single column report was worth the effort. As has been pointed out, the story wasn’t even local to Staffordshire. Anyone who wanted to follow events could do so online or via rolling TV news reports. The only way to make all that effort worthwhile would be at least to make the story the splash, albeit with whatever tenuous local angle you could find thrown in.

SebastianFaults (13/07/2010 17:46:05)
It will be interesting to see the sales figures and, therefore, whether the effort did pay off.
I’d also be interested to know from NorthEastener whether his group pulled out special early editions to cover the story.
Sadly, the journalists are often willing and eager, but once they come up against the number-crunchers they hit a brick wall.
After a while, their malaise infects the newsroom too.

Sign of the Times (14/07/2010 09:20:08)
Jelly C (13/07/2010 10:39): “Regional paper criticised for carrying latest news” – you couldn’t make it up.
Emphasis on the REGIONAL there Jelly C. The Raoul Moat story had nothing to do with Staffordshire so it doesn’t matter how ‘latest’ the paper was with the news, the story was still well off-patch. In any case, even coming out with it first thing in the morning, they were still many hours behind the internet and TV.
If ‘regional’ newspapers actually stuck to producing proper high-quality regional stories then they would be doing a lot better.

Real North Easterner (14/07/2010 13:45:46)
Still a good decision to let you go Phil…