Two North West regional dailies beat the nationals to reveal the results of a by-election in print on their respective front pages.

Both today’s Oldham Chronicle and the city free edition of the Manchester Evening News splashed on Jim McMahon’s victory in Oldham West and Royton.

Labour candidate Mr McMahon held the seat for the party by a majority of more than 10,000.

The by-election had been triggered by the death of veteran MP Michael Meacher, news of whose death had been previously broken by the Chronicle on its website.

Today’s splash, pictured above, followed a front page plea in Wednesday’s edition urging readers to take part in yesterday’s ballot.

The eventual turnout was 40.2pc, higher than had been expected.

Chronicle managing editor David Whaley said: “We are one of the last ‘on-the-day’ daily newspapers in the country so getting the result in our product was never going to be an issue.

“Our reporter Alex Carey did an excellent job covering the run-up to the by-election and with reporter Iram Ramzan and news editor Richard Hooton they provided full coverage of the result.

“They came straight back to the offices in Oldham to write up and the pages were done and dusted within a couple of hours. We also put the result out on social media and our own website.

“The design team had already schemed Alex’s additional two-page background feature on the political rise of council leader Jim McMahon, and substitute pages for a different result. They were sent to Trinity Mirror Print Oldham first-thing on Friday morning and we printed on time.

“A good job by a small but professional outfit who continue to do everything asked of them and who make me very proud to work with them in what are testing times for local newspapers.”