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Editor’s Blog RSS

The HTFP Editor’s Blog has previously had a number of different homes including The Journalism Hub and HTFPConnect but it can now be found here on the main site. Editor Paul Linford and his colleagues on the content team will be giving their take on current industry developments and also highlighting other interesting journalism news and commentary from around the web.

Should football pundits be axed to save journalists’ jobs?

I don’t know whether Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford is a football fan, but this blog post calling for star presenters such as Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen to be sacked in order to save the jobs of BBC journalists

Brighter new look for HoldtheFrontPage

HoldtheFrontPage has today unveiled a series of design tweaks to its homepage including greater prominence for jobs and a new ‘media funnies’ channel. The site’s new WordPress platform has now been live for six months and although user feedback has

Oh the irony: new media mag scraps print edition

I couldn’t help but be slightly amused by the news that New Media Age magazine is to axe its print edition and go online-only.  It almost makes you wonder why it had one in the first place! Now all we

The regional editor who revealed the existence of the deep-fried Mars Bar

I always thought the deep-fried Mars Bar originated from Glasgow, but one regional newspaper editor claims otherwise. Find out who it was who first revealed the existence of the craze then taking hold among schoolchildren in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, in this week’s Take

Now whose idea was that?

Editors are often accused of taking the credit for the efforts of their staff – but not Bristol Evening Post boss Mike Norton. After handing over the prize for Supplement of the Year at yesterday’s Regional Press Awards, presenter Nick

Shades of Channon as Geere scoops top prize

No question who was the happiest winner at yesterday’s Regional Press Awards ceremony in London – Essex Chronicle editor Alan Geere. In the lift beforehand, Geere was playing down his paper’s chances of success in the Weekly Newspaper of the

Andy Coulson rated ‘best ever colleague’

Which regional press editor rates former Downing Street communications chief Andy Coulson the best journalist they ever worked with? Find out here at our new weekly feature, Take Five.

HTFPConnect – Your community, your space

Welcome to HTFPConnect, the new blogging and social networking platform for HoldtheFrontPage. You can use this site to link up with other journalists – colleagues, former colleagues and college mates – and to create your own blogs on the site.

Now, what was the name of that newspaper?

News that two regional daily newspapers have  been awarded public money from the government’s Regional Growth Fund to help boost job creation in their areas is welcome recognition of the wider role of the local media. But the handling of

Could this be the ‘head’-line of the year?

We’d normally save this for the Friday Funnies on HTFP, but this one from the Gloucestershire Echo is already doing the rounds of the UK regional journalism community so we thought we’d give it an outing here. Needless to say,

Lighten up folks…..

Over the past couple of days this light-hearted tale about a journalism trainee faced with a dilemma over whether to take a job in his girlfriend’s home city or his own has become one of our most commented-on stories ever.

What to do on a slow news day

When I spotted the headline Journalist Quits Job Due to Slow News Day I have to confess I got rather excited. Had something like that occurred in the UK regional press it would certainly have been a top story for

Gallows humour at Press launch

Media entrepreneur Chris Bullivant may have branded regional publisher Trinity Mirror as ‘barmy’ at the champagne launch of his new Birmingham Press title last Friday – but not all the partygoers were quite as gung-ho. As our mole at the

A culture clash in Wolverhampton?

One of the great things about having a story comments facility on your website is that it enables users to amplify what you have already written, and perhaps introduce fresh angles and context to a story. So it was with

Culture minister praises HTFP blogger

We’ve been pretty pleased so far with the reaction to our new HoldtheFrontPage blogger – former Birmingham Mail editor Steve Dyson. Although not everyone has necessarily agreed with his weekly critiques of local and regional newspapers, that wasn’t the point.