Spot the editor

This old Northcliffe football team picture, supplied by the Oxford Mail's Simon O'Neill,  features no fewer than eight current or recent regional editorial executives. I remember them playing The Northern Echo side while on tour ... and, boy, were they brutal. The only team our side ever refused to drink with afterwards. See how many you can name. Answers here. 

Days of hot metal and Biffo the stonehand

The news that the Shields Gazette is moving from its Chapter Row offices in South Shields has taken me on a brief journey down memory lane. When I was a trainee reporter at the Shields Weekly News, on the other side of the Tyne in North Shields, all of our copy was set and our pages made up at the Gazette offices. An elderly messenger used to pick up the copy and pictures, walk down to the ferry (the Freda Cunningham), cross the river, head up the hill to the Gazette, deliver our typed copy and then come back again. He did this on a continual loop every day. Then, on one memorable occasion, I too got to make the journey. The editor, the colourful Robin Thompson, was going on holiday and decided I should learn how to sub and stone-in the pages. So after laying out the sports pages I headed off across the Tyne for my first ever experience as a stone sub. It was 34 years ago but it remains one of my most vivid memories. Hot metal, chases and flongs, the clatter, the dominant smell of ink and the stroppy stonehands, who clearly thought the 22-year-old trainee in the ill-fitting John Collier suit was an idiot. I remember just standing and staring. It was there and then that I acquired my lifelong subbing fascination. And then I was whisked off to the General Havelock for the compulsory, and very quick, two-pint break before finishing off the pages. Once they were done I read them, marked up all the changes and then, grabbing my first set of final proofs with enormous pride, legged it back for the last ferry home. It became a regular trip. I eventually got to know what I was doing, played for the Gazette football team (which included Mel Vasey who went on to edit the Wharfedale Observer and qualify as a referee) and met some great friends. A year later, when I was off to The Northern Echo, I had farewell drinks with all the inkies in the Havelock. With Dutch courage I turned to the huge bald stonehand who I had worked with for the last 12 months. I had no idea what his real name was, only that he was known as Biffo. Tell me, I slurred, do they call you Biffo because you look like the bear from the Beano? No, he said, they call me Biffo because I'm a Big Ignorant Fucker From Ouston. Good luck to current editor John Szymanski (@John_Szy) and all of those moving from Chapter Row. They carry with them a huge slice of history.
Picture: Shields Gazette 

Richard Wooldridge remembered

Family, friends and newspaper colleagues gathered at St. Chad’s Church in York yesterday for a memorial service for Richard Wooldridge, MD of the Yorkshire Evening Press (YEP), editorial director of Westminster Press (WP) and finally CEO of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. Richard, 69, was the victim of a heart attack while on holiday in Morocco in March.

His burial was in France, where he and his family had lived since he joined the IHT, so the York service was an opportunity for those on this side of the Channel to remember him and mark his passing.

The service was led by Reverend Canon Simon Stanley, a long-standing family friend since the Wooldridge’s time in York, who recalled Richard’s passion for rally driving. He experienced terror as a passenger in a car being driven by Richard along North Yorkshire’s narrow country roads to a Sunday pub lunch.

“Sensing my unease,” he said, “Richard explained to me that driving on the wrong side of the road was perfectly legal as long as there’s nothing coming the other way.”

Nick Herbert, Richard’s predecessor as WP’s editorial director, and former YEP editor David Nicholson paid tribute to Richard’s passion for high editorial standards, campaigning journalism, and community involvement in regional newspapers.

The congregation also included former YEP colleagues Alan Potter (chief sub), feature writer Robert Beaumont and Martin King (Richard’s deputy editor and later Basildon Evening Echo editor), and David Kernek (aka David Flintham) his successor as YEP editor and later editor of The Northern Echo.

One of Richard’s biggest YEP campaigns was the – inevitably doomed – fight to stop the Nestlé’s Rowntree take-over in 1988. As happenstance would have it, the rumble of tumbling brick could be heard in St. Chad’s as the demolition of the 1926 Terry’s chocolate factory on the other side of the Knavesmire began. Terry's was taken over in 1993 by Kraft, which closed the factory in 2005 and moved production to Europe. Its closure brought to an end more than a century of chocolate-making in York.

How I got my hands on Shay Given's gloves

Andy Cooper left the editorship of the North Devon Journal on Friday after 15 years with Northcliffe's Cornwall and Devon Media. I first met Andy 17 years ago when he attended one of our Editor's Chair courses while editing the Brentwood Gazette. I have worked with him since from time to time, including the redesign of the CDM titles. Most memorable though was a Northcliffe editor's conference in 2007. I agreed to organise and run the conference at Tortworth Court Hotel near Bristol and invited big-hitters such as Tim Anderson from Bluffton Today, Graham Dudman from The Sun, Vicky Taylor from the BBC and Lars Jespersen from Danish media company Nordeskye. The conference timings meant I was to be away from home for my birthday (no problem there) which also happened to be the date of the UEFA Cup Final in Glasgow. No worries. The chances of Newcastle United reaching the final were astronomical. As the date grew closer though it wasn't quite as cut and dry. Newcastle had comfortably won their group stage, brushed aside Zulte Waregem 4-1 in the knock out stages and, having beaten AZ Alkmaar 4-2 at St James's, looked set for the quarter finals. The prospect of Newcastle winning their first meaningful trophy in 38 years, on my birthday, and me not being there (I was at the Fairs Cup Final in 1969) was too terrible to contemplate. I worked out the flights, trains and even the drive that would get me from Glasgow to Bristol overnight in time for the conference opening. In typical fashion, Andy offered to hold the fort. As it happens, and in equally typical fashion, Glenn Roeder's team crashed out in the away leg in Holland. Panic over. When I arrived at Tortworth Court (instead of Hampden Park) on the evening before the conference, Andy was there to buy me a birthday drink and present me with one of the most cherished gifts I have ever received. Concerned that I was going to miss a rare moment of Newcastle glory, he had written to Newcastle goalkeeper Shay Given and been sent a pair of his signed gloves (in return for a donation to the Irish international's favoured charity). Andy had framed the gloves along with a brass plaque that reads: Presented to Peter Sands with grateful thanks for his help in organising the Northcliffe Editorial Conference 2007. It was always in safe hands ... just like Shay Given's. 

It was a fantastic gesture by Andy that typifies his generosity. He bowed out on Friday with a note that ended with: I wish you all the very best, both personally and professionally, in whatever life throws in front of you in the future and, in the immortal words of Sergeant Phil Esterhaus . . .Let's be careful out there. Good luck Andy ... and many thanks.

    

Let's hear it for Simon Ricketts ...

In February Simon Ricketts, a Hastings graduates of 1993 and now a senior Guardian journalist, dropped a bombshell on Twitter. He was off for an operation. This was no simple affair - one that involved sawing his breastbone in half, opening his ribcage, lowering his body temperature so that his heart stopped and then – through an artery – they had to take blood clots/scar tissue out of his lungs. Late one Sunday evening last month Simon made a little announcement on Twitter. Here it is - an amazing read - and then he disappeared. The best thing that happened today was that he returned. His first Tweet back was 'Sorry I haven't tweeted for a while. I've been queueing for petrol.' His second told the story of what he has been up to since that last Tweet. A fantastic read and fantastic news. Welcome back.

You can follow Simon on @SimonNRicketts

Making the headlines sing ...

Tabloid headline writers have always used song lyrics as part of their toolkit - sometimes to stunning effect. Today's Daily Mirror splash, taken from Carl Douglas's Kung Fu Fighting, is a fine effort. As veteran editor Mike Lowe @cotslifeeditor observes on Twitter it is an obvious example of the back bench coming up with a splash head and then telling the newsdesk to stand it up. I don't have a problem with that though. Writing the headline first is an old tabloid trick - although the story does have to stand-up of course.

I am in the sticks today so didn't see Metro but @LewisWiltshire reports it has a feature on Greggs with the heading We built this city on sausage rolls. Nice touch. It was a song by Starship in 1985. I wonder, though, how many young London urbanites will have got it. And there's the first tip ... use songs that the vast majority of your readers know.

I remember a headline in an Irish paper above a picture of a defendant leaving court and shielding his face which read: It's been a bad day please don't take my picture.  It's by REM and isn't even the song title so may just have gone over some people's heads. The second tip is try to make the headline understandable, even if people don't know the song. 

The Sun's excellent  How do you solve a problem like Korea? makes sense even if you have never heard of The Sound of Music. 

The third tip is don't overdo it. When I was working at the Mirror in 1997 we counted 13 song titles in headlines in one issue. We even had a debate over whether Who's Sorry Now? was a song title or had become a phrase ingrained in the language. Anyway, we decided there were too many Frank Sinatra headlines for a paper that was aiming at a young market.  

Some other notables are Mourn on the Fourth of July, a bit of  anti-war poignancy from the Mirror via Springsteen, and the Mail's Diamonds are for weather, when Dame Shirley Bassey donned diamond encrusted wellies in a rainstorm.

The most famous headlines from song lyrics are, of course, from the Sun ... Zip me up before you go go and Super Caley go ballistic Celtic are atrocious. Tabloid genius. If you have any others let me have them. My email is petersands@mistral.co.uk.     

Tributes to two regional newspaper giants

Like many people in regional newspapers I was saddened by the deaths of two of the industry's big hitters in the last week. Edwin Boorman was, at different times, managing director, chief executive, chairman and president of the Kent Messenger Group. He died last Wednesday after a short illness. He was 76. Richard Wooldridge was editor and MD of the Yorkshire Evening Press and editorial director of Westminster Press before becoming chief operating officer and president of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. He died, age 69, of a heart attack on Sunday while on a family holiday in Morocco. I worked closely with Richard in the old WP Group and met Edwin many times, I had great respect for both men. However I have asked two former editors and colleagues, who knew Edwin and Richard much better than I did, to pay their own personal tributes. Allan Prosser, my predecessor at The Northern Echo, left the North-East in 1989 to become editorial director at the KM and Martin King worked as Richard's right-hand man at York in the late 80s. Here are their memories of two of the regional Press's giants.

Edwin Boorman 
Champion of Press freedom
 

Edwin Boorman: committed local publisher

By Allan Prosser
Edwin Boorman, the colourful leader of the Kent Messenger Group, who died last week, was one of the few remaining representatives of the dwindling number of dynastic families who shaped and characterised the local press for more than a century.
In Edwin's case he passed the torch to his daughter, Geraldine, and maintained the staunch and sturdy independence of his newspaper group while rivals and contemporaries signed a Faustian pact and saw their once proud titles fall into the void in the accounting columns of large groups semi-detached from the communities they profess to serve.
I had the pleasure of working with Edwin for four years in the early 90s as his editorial director. It was a period for which the phrase "never a dull moment" might have been coined. A new press was installed; a fascinating joint project established with trans-Manche publishers La Voix du Nord; a successful chain of county-wide free papers further strengthened and a bold attempt made to extend his Medway Towns-based daily newspaper to cover the rest of Kent.
While that ultimately failed, the victim both of the dedication in the South-East of newspaper readers to London-based nationals, and the problems of financing such an ambitious plan, it did deliver the valuable by-product of instilling the rhythms of daily publishing across his whole group, ahead of the expansion into the Internet age, and added momentum to the process of unifying all his titles under the over-arching KM brand.
Edwin was a highly-committed local publisher who didn't shy away from tough decisions. The KM came close to disaster during a punishing dispute with the print unions over the introduction of new technology - a cause he always espoused - in the 1980s and has remained influential and progressive despite successive recessions and now a grim slump. It is typical of the company that he guided for so many years that even at the depth of the economic downturn it was seeking growth last winter by endeavouring to purchase seven Northcliffe titles in Kent, a sensible rationalisation thwarted by the Office of Fair Trading's referral to the Competitions Commission.
Some memories can stand to tell the story of the man.
During the early 1990s it was proving almost impossible to recruit and retain sub-editors for the KM's titles. From London's back garden there was no shortage of available shifts and better-remunerated opportunities. The company, heavily encouraged by Edwin, established its own excellent training scheme, in the teeth of considerable industry scepticism, to retrain people from non-traditional backgrounds. It was a success, and one more example of the KM's can-do mentality engendered by him.
Edwin was a proprietor who enjoyed the status offered by his position, but did not allow his privileges to impede what he viewed as his duty to uphold the freedom of the press. He didn't much enjoy the occasion when his daily paper editor took the decision to publish a transcript of what has gone down in history as the "Camillagate Tape" which brought obloquy down on the chairman's head from the great and good of the county and may even, it's been suggested more than once, have cost him his "K". But Edwin supported the decision, albeit through gritted teeth. And was to be much admired for doing so.
And his sense of good natured mischief was something to be treasured. With the opening of the Channel Tunnel Edwin was keen to establish a cross-border partnership with the Nord Pas de Calais morning paper La Voix du Nord and insisted that his executives were hothoused through a course in French. On the way to an important business meeting in Lille with our Gallic allies I warned the chairman not to rely on my grasp of franglais to make any substantive commercial points. Hours later, high in their boardroom overlooking the Place du General de Gaulle, after proposing a toast with excellent champagne and in his fluent French Edwin called for silence and announced that I would now spell out to the assembled throng the KM's vision of the new "grande entente." My baleful stare was returned by his amused smile and a gracious incline of the head in my direction.
On one of the last occasions I worked with him we spent a summer evening in the sylvan surroundings of Leeds Castle listening to a concert by Luciano Pavarotti. Edwin, handsome, smiling, champagne flute in hand, wandered around spending time with as many people as he could. And that's how I will remember him on that golden evening, at ease among his own, the men of Kent and the Kentish men. And not forgetting the maids.
Allan Prosser was editorial director of the Kent Messenger Group 1990-1994.
A memorial service will be held for the life of Edwin Boorman at 3pm on April 4 at All Saints Church in Mill Street, Maidstone.

Richard Wooldridge 
A newspaper visionary
 

Richard Wooldridge: Campaigning editor

By Martin King
Two major facets of Richard’s nature were clear to me just days after I joined The Yorkshire Evening Press, where he had the unusual joint role of Managing Director and Editor.
It started with something like: “We are going to run a campaign to challenge the Nestlé takeover bid for Rowntree.  And we are going to take about 1,200 staff and other folk from York to lobby Parliament. We’re trying for the day after tomorrow. Can you sort that?”
And thus the Hands Off Rowntree campaign was launched (Richard’s instant name for it). And sure enough, every spare coach in North Yorkshire headed off to Westminster just two days later.
The first facet was that he was a campaigning editor brave enough to take on a battle he knew he was unlikely to win. But he wanted to give York the pride of at least having its protest and, for a while at least, hopefully improving the terms of the deal for the city.
The second facet was the demonstration of how much he challenged his journalists – and how they surprised themselves by raising their game in response.
His campaigning was not just restricted to the popular. The call for the closure to traffic of Deangate beside York Minster was met with some scepticism in a traffic-bound city. Richard was right, of course, that the Minster needed more dignified surroundings and that the motorists would soon adapt.
He also excelled in his Managing Director role, overseeing the YEP’s move from its decrepit Coney Street offices, where the press often came within inches of flooding, to a new building in Walmgate – with a new colour press that also worked nights to produce The Northern Echo. The YEP circulation reached well over 60,000 - with a household penetration in its heartland that was second to none. (Never let it be said, though, that his MD’s role diminished his editorial influence. He had the unnerving knack of appearing in the newsroom at the exact moment decisions were needed. Believe me: I was his Deputy Editor for more than four years.)
All this happened in the late 1980s. Many newspaper executives were still sceptical about the Internet, but not Richard. With a growing role that eventually saw him becoming Editorial Director of the Westminster Press group, he pushed and backed online and group initiatives that were way ahead of its competitors.
Richard was also notable for early demands to his staff for greater adherence to the best practices called for by the Press Complaints Commission’s precursors. None of his journalists can have been in doubt of his response to any lapse in standards.
After WP was sold to Newsquest in the mid-1990s, Richard became Chief Executive Officer of the International Herald Tribune.
The move to Paris was little surprise for those who knew his love of France, where he stayed after his retirement.
Richard died on Sunday aged 69 while holidaying in Morocco with his wife Lynda, a former head teacher at Dunnington primary school near York, and daughter Henrietta and son Christopher.
Martin King was deputy editor of the Yorkshire Evening Press and editor of the Evening Echo, Basildon.
A funeral service will be held in France and a memorial service, details of which are to be arranged, will take place in York later this year.

The power of 300+ pictures

How many headshots can you get on a front page? Nigel Pickover's (@Nigel_Pickover) innovative Ipswich Star has more than 300 on the cover today - to get over a poignant message about the number of deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan. Powerful stuff.