A weekly newspaper editor made the news himself after being injured in a cycling collision.
Robert Barman, who edits the Kentish Express, was hurt after riding his bike into a scaffolding pole in the village of Wye, near Ashford, on Saturday morning.
Robert, pictured above left after the incident, was in Ashford’s William Harvey Hospital until late on Saturday night, with the incident leaving him unconscious for several hours.
However, he woke up on Sunday morning and went straight into a weekend editing shift for Express publisher the KM Group’s KentOnline website.
It was one of Robert’s own reporters, Aidan Barlow, who found himself reporting on his editor’s unfortunate mishap.
KM Group editorial director Ian Carter paid tribute to Robert’s quick recovery from the crash.
He said: ” “It was to Robert’s huge credit that he put in a full shift on the Sunday.
“Hopefully Aidan found it quite easy to get a condition check on the victim.”
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I recall a similar-ish story in the Hull Daily Mail concerning a trainee journalist’s unfortunate journey to cover a meeting of her town’s road safety committee.
Leeds-born Margaret Buck, who had only recently begun her indentures at the Goole Times, was knocked off her bicycle, sustaining minor injuries and major wounded pride.
I can’t remember whether she needed hospital treatment after the crash in the early 1970s or, indeed, if she managed to report on the safety committees’ deliberations.
But Margaret, who later went on to work as a sub-editor for the HDM, did discuss her embarrassing accident with one of the Mail’s staffers, Bob Kernohan, who promptly wrote a light-hearted piece for the following day’s edition.
As for the headline, it was suitably humorous. The precise wording escapes me, but “Safety committee reporter’s crash: Buck stops here” was probably near the mark.
Ouch!
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You should see the ‘after’ picture.
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Was the scaffold pole all right?
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Was it a left hook from a scaffolding pole?
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Should have looked where he was going. Was he on the footpath?
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