The longest-serving daily editor in Northcliffe Media has announced his retirement after 26 years of running newspapers.
Spencer Feeney, editor of the Swansea-based South Wales Evening Post for the past decade, will become the ninth senior Northcliffe editor to leave the business in the past year.
He has spent 30 years with the publishing group and before moving to Swansea, he was editor of The Citizen, Gloucester, for seven years, and before that the weekly Llanelli Star.
Spencer, pictured, is also currently editor in chief of South West Wales Media, with overall editorial responsibility for the Star and the Carmarthen Journal as well as the Post. He will leave on 28 September.
Said Spencer: “I am 62 this year, and after ten years as Post editor it simply feels like the right time for me to call it a day.
“I know I am going to miss the excitement of seeing the paper coming together every day, but I won’t miss waking up at 2am with second thoughts about that headline or court snatch pic.
“I’ve been working on regional newspapers since I left school in 1969, so retirement is going to be a strange experience.
“But I am sure that it is the right time for me to stand aside and let somebody else enjoy the fun of a great job.”
Rich Mead, Executive Director, Northcliffe Media said: “Spencer is a first-class journalist and has made a massive contribution to all our titles in South Wales.
“He played a major role in creating “Wales’ largest selling newspaper” after overtaking Trinity Mirror’s Cardiff-based titles the Western Mail and South Wales Echo to become the largest-selling regional newspaper in Wales. I wish him well for his retirement.”
A former member of the Press Complaints Commission, Spencer was one of the regional editors asked to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry.
Other senior Northcliffe editors to leave in the past year include Jon Grubb (Lincolnshire Echo), John Meehan (Hull Daily Mail), Keith Perch (Leicester Mercury), Marc Astley (Exeter Express & Echo), Andy Cooper (Cornwall and Devon Media), Malcolm Pheby (Nottingham Post) Alan Qualtrough (Western Morning News) and Sam Holliday (Bath Chronicle.)
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Tough job replacing him. SWEP is a proper local newspaper that still feels like it is part of the community.
Hope he enjoys his retirement.
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Hypothetically speaking, if the BBC, in the space of a year, allowed Gary Lineker, Nicky Campbell, Sue Barker, Ken Bruce, John Humphreys, Evan Davies, Nick Robinson, Graham Norton, Jeremy Paxman, Dermot O’Leary, Chris Moyles, Fiona Bruce & Terry Wogan to leave their books, would “questions be asked in the House”? #justsayin
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Good luck to him – as a commercial department individual when I dealt with Spencer he always grasped the proposition and supported it as an editor as much as he could. Top bloke!
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Spencer was the first editor I worked for and the last – a great character and true newspaperman. He gave me many great opportunities through the years. All the best, Spencer, for a long and happy retirement.
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Here Here to the above.
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Enjoy it…you have certainly earned it. The next person in your seat will have a great role model to follow!
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It may not have seemed like it at times but Spencer fought hard for the journalistic principles that run through him and did his best to protect staff and the paper from the swinging cuts being directed from above (the east).
Sadly I fear the next person to sit in such a great chair will either be a company man who will gladly carry out the bidding and continue the death by cuts of a great institution, or someone suitably malleable to those intent on paying dividends at the cost of great community newspapers. I fear either way that person will have the unfortunate footnote in history of being in charge when the tree finally topples over.
But that shouldn’t take away from paying tribute to a great editor who has served the communities he’s represented extremely well. He’ll find it hard to let go (all proper news folk do) but he certainly deserves a break.
Enjoy yourself sir.
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You’re too young to retire, Spencer! Anyway, very best wishes to a great journalist and great all-round guy. He gave me my first daily sub-editing job, at Gloucester, after I had spent many, many years on one weekly and he was an excellent and fair-minded boss I will always hold in the highest regard.
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