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Journalist launches ‘proper paper’ for hometown after leaving nationals

A veteran national journalist has returned from London to launch a newspaper in his hometown – claiming “barely any” news is currently covered there.

Lawrence ‘Loz’ Hatton, who worked for 30 years on Fleet Street before retiring last year, has launched the Ilkeston Inquirer with his wife, brother and sister-in-law after forming a company called Eyup Me Duck Newspapers – a reference to the colloquial East Midlands greeting.

The free Inquirer will be initially published monthly, and its inaugural May edition had a print run of 10,000.

Loz, 58, was born and raised in the Derbyshire town, known locally as ‘Ilson’, and began his career as a reporter on the Fleet Street news agency after studying on an NCTJ course in Darlington.

Ilkeston Inquirer

He then moved on to the now-defunct Trader group in the East Midlands and the Nottingham Evening Post before moving to London, where he served as assistant night editor on the Daily Mirror prior to switching to The Sun.

Loz took voluntary redundancy last year after 25 years with The Sun, and subsequently returned with his wife Mary, 56, to their hometown.

He told HTFP the Inquirer’s 28-page first edition had “gone down a storm”, adding: “I am convinced the town is vibrant enough to sustain a proper paper. There was a time when it had two paid-for weeklies and later also a clutch of freesheets.

“It still baffles me how the Trader group papers were so mismanaged they went to the wall. In my day they were making a fortune.”

The Inquirer features straplines including “At last! A proper paper for Ilson full of real local stories” and “Ilson news is our appeal, we’re not based in Chesterfiel'”.

The latter alludes to JPIMedia’s existing weekly the Ilkeston Advertiser, which is managed from Chesterfield.

Speaking about the Advertiser, Loz said: “There is barely any Ilkeston news in it, although a heck of a lot from Chesterfield – a place Ilson folk have zero interested in.

“It’s the usual scenario – a front page write-off for the Ilkeston edition with a read-full-story on Page nine, then a couple of other sops thrown in here and there.”

He added: “We don’t expect to make a fortune. We are doing it for our town.”

HTFP has approached the Ilkeston Advertiser for a comment.

4 comments

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  • May 20, 2019 at 9:28 am
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    Wishing you the best of luck. I think we’re going to see a LOT more of this type of launch over the coming years especially where you’re up against a zombie JPI title.

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  • May 20, 2019 at 11:23 am
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    Much good luck to Loz, talented son of one of my former Sun colleagues, who was also talented.

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  • May 20, 2019 at 11:32 am
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    Best of luck. My JPI local is packed with news and sport from outside the area that smells of a desperate filling operation. Good to see a new publication concentrating on LOCAL news.

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  • May 20, 2019 at 11:33 am
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    I have nothing but complete admiration and good wishes for Loz and the many like him who’ve spotted a gap in the local news market and are filling it with the kind of news publication the ailing bigger players are no longer interested in.
    There are some superb examples across the east where I am, all flourishing and picking up readers, advertisers and earning livings doing what they were taught to do.

    Good luck to you all, it’s the future

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