A regional press chief responsible for appointing some of the industry’s most high-profile editors has died aged 88.

Tributes have been paid to Nick Herbert, who edited the Cambridge Evening News and went on to spend 18 years as editorial director of Westminster Press.

His time at the group, which owned 120 regional and local newspaper titles, had been preceded by a reporting career in which he covered the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, while also counting Martin Luther King among his interviewees.

Former colleagues have variously described Nick, pictured, as a “kingmaker”, “visionary” and “a champion for editorial freedom” who “inspired a generation of journalists to create campaigning and compassionate community newspapers”.

Former WP chief executive and chairman Hew Stevenson said: “Nick was immensely charming and commanded the respect of everyone throughout the Westminster Press group, being totally at ease with all walks of life.

“I shall never forget his courage, a quality sorely needed in the newspaper industry, as we fought to introduce new technology in the face of determined union opposition in the 1980s.

“He had a gift for spotting the best in people and promoting them into jobs in which they then flourished. There were many in Westminster Press – not just editors but young managers as well – who went on to enjoy happy and successful careers as a result of his benign and powerful influence.

“He had all the qualities that would have made him an exceptional officer in the armed forces.”

Former Northern Echo editor Allan Prosser, who Nick made editor of the Acton Gazette at 25, added: “Nick was a man of deeply held convictions and opinions and one of the most fundamentally decent and honourable people you could ever meet.

“I lost count of the times he told me that it was important that journalists leave the office to ‘get the winds of the world in their face’.

“For years he formed a formidable double act with Bob James, the master typographer of his age, and championed the role of technology which he thought would liberate editorial from artificial and restrictive ‘old Spanish customs’.”

And Neil Benson, who worked at former WP title the Bradford Telegraph & Argus before going on to edit the Coventry Telegraph and Newcastle daily The Chronicle, said: “I remember Nick as a charming and thoroughly decent man, who always had time for people.

“On one occasion, he’d heard I was disappointed at missing out on a promotion, and he went out of his way to meet me and to explain his decision.

“I was very impressed by that. When I was made editorial director at Trinity Mirror Regionals, I thought about the way Nick had done the job at Westminster Press, and took a lot from it.”

Nick was born in Watford and spent his early childhood in Uganda, where his father was a headteacher, before attending Oundle School, in Northamptonshire, and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he read English.

He started his career on the Reuters sports desk before moving to the diplomatic desk in USA.

Nick then joined The Times as assistant Washington correspondent, under the legendary Louis Heren, in 1960.

There, he covered the assassination of JFK, the Cuban missile crisis, attended the first Beatles concert at the Washington Coliseum and interviewed Martin Luther King Jr while walking over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

Nick was appointed Middle East correspondent and moved, with his wife Jenny and two small children, to Beirut, where he covered the Six Day War in 1967, the Shah of Iran’s inauguration and the withdrawal of British troops from Aden.

He returned to Britain as deputy features editor at The Times and in 1970 took on the editorship of the Cambridge Evening News, moving four years later to become WP’s editorial director.

During his tenure he guided the WP titles from hot metal to new technology, set up the renowned editorial training centre in Hastings and, as chairman of the Guild of British Newspaper Editors, was an architect of the Society of Editors.

Perry Austin-Clarke, who Nick appointed as editor of the Yorkshire Gazette and Herald and who went on to be the long-standing editor of the Telegraph & Argus, said: “I will always be grateful for the example he set of a rigorous adherence to traditional editorial principles – one I tried hard to uphold over my next 30 years as an editor.

“He was unfailingly good humoured and, in my early years, I was always grateful for the occasional motivational notes he typed up on copy paper and dispatched from Newspaper House.

“‘Old school’ he may have been but he always had an eye to change and future trends. I remember sitting around a green-screen computer in his London office as he introduced editors to something called ‘the worldwide web’ – and urged us to get to know it intimately.

“Integrity and a passionate belief in the fourth estate were key to the respect and admiration he was held in by all the editors.”

Former Darlington Evening Despatch editor Robin Thompson, who Nick persuaded to take over the Hastings training centre when his newspaper folded in 1986, added: “He was immensely proud of the top quality training he had created and, for me, Nick was the father figure.

“He gave me the opportunities to work with hundreds of our best journalists in the editorial departments and then as the Westminster Press Diploma in Journalism replaced the NCTJ scheme as the industry standard for excellence.

“These were the glory days of the British provincial press and Nick was the visionary and political force at the centre of it all. It will never be repeated. Nor will he.”

And Peter Sands, who Nick appointed as editor of the Northern Echo in 1989, said: “Nick gave me an opportunity that genuinely changed my life forever.

“I had run-ins with judges, politicians, advertisers threatening to boycott the paper, and was twice threatened with prison, and he never failed to offer wise counsel and support – always on the side of editorial integrity. He was certainly one of the good guys and I owe him a great deal.”

Nick became WP’s deputy chief executive in 1992 and retired in 1996 when owners Pearson sold the newspaper group to Newsquest.

He also sat in the House of Lords as a hereditary peer until 1999, having succeeded his father in 1982 to become 3rd Baron, Lord Hemingford of Watford.

Nick, who died on 17 December, was married to Jennifer from 1958 until her death in 2018m and the couple had children Libby, Cally, Alice and Chris and 12 grandchildren.

He married the novelist Jill Paton Walsh in September 2020 but she died just three weeks after the wedding.

Nick’s funeral will be held on Friday 3 February at 2.30pm in St Margaret’s Church, Hemingford Abbots, Cambridgeshire.