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Essex weekly recruits 20 new columnists

A weekly newspaper in Essex has recruited 20 new columnists from the ranks of the paper’s readers.

For the past year the Brentwood Gazette has been running a ‘Reader Writer’ section enabling readers to send in articles to be published for free.

Now the feature is to be extended with 20 regular columnists writing for the paper on a monthly rota basis with four columns appearing each week.

Called Gazette People, it was officially launched in this week’s edition of the Northcliffe-owned weekly which hit the streets yesterday.

Editor Nev Wilson said:  “As editor of the Gazette, and leader of a team of four men all aged between 25 and 40, I felt we didn’t represent the readers of our paper particularly well.

“Gazette People was an attempt to attract more readers to the paper by getting people of similar interests, backgrounds and ages to write for us.”

The 20 columnists will write about their lives and interests spanning a broad range of subjects including food, gardening, politics, history, fashion and celebrity.

Added Nev: “The Brentwood Gazette has long been the voice of the people, now this really is the case.”

 

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  • September 28, 2012 at 1:51 pm
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    This is absolute nonsense. The only reason this particular paper is getting ‘guest columnists’ is because Northcliffe has/or plans to lay off reporters (but not editors) and make 30per cent of its content from ‘community sources’. What about reporters? What about NEWS?

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