Richard Harris may believe himself to have been a useless editor, but he is no mean book publicist as he proved last week.

The former Carlisle News and Star boss spoke to HTFP last week about his recently-published autobiography The Accidental Editor which, among other things, describes his sacking from the CN Group-owned title in 1993 after three and a half years in charge. Read more »

Every so often we publish a story on HoldtheFrontPage - usually a retirement story or an obituary - which reveals the depth of affection in which some journalists are held by their former colleagues.

Such an example is Alan Goode, whose death at the age of 72 was reported on the site earlier this week. Read more »

The Society of Editors conference is always a highlight of the year for us here at HTFP. Apart from anything else, it's a great chance to catch up with old friends and contacts and experience the camaraderie that, in spite of everything, still lies at the heart of our industry. Read more »

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 strikes me as brave and thereby worthy of a wider audience. Read more »

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 been generally positive, we felt there was still room for improvement.

For instance, some users had commented that they found the Lucida main text font rather blurry.  We agreed and have now changed it back to the much sharper Arial font we used on the old site. Read more »

It was huge breaking news, but the Pontefract & Castleford Express struggled to sell the story on its front page on Thursday 29 September.

There had been a roof collapse at the nearby Kellingley Colliery on the Tuesday afternoon, trapping two miners, and it was soon announced that one had been killed.

More than 800 local people work at the mine and crowds of anxious relatives gathered to find out who had been lost or injured, with the victim’s name released just before the Express went to press on the Wednesday.   Read more »

In early 1994, I sat through an hour-long presentation given by someone brought in by the Liverpool Daily Post to talk to journalists about Total Quality Management.

Trinity Newspapers, who owned the paper, felt it was important for us to understand that we were part of a Grand Plan. That, previously unknown to us, there was a proven management theory at work. And we few were in the vanguard of progress. Read more »

Consider the basic facts: 12 counts of downloading child pornography and a local defendant who's a former school governor.

He's also an ex-district councillor, so his pictures are on file, and yes – all this information is exclusive on a weekly's deadline.

What a great, no-brainer splash that will sell newspapers. Read more »

Few things "get to me" these days. Maybe I've reached the mid-life point where I may not have seen everything, but things that might have shocked me as a 20-year-old have lost their impact.

I have to admit, though, that the decision to block regional newspapers from accreditation to the Olympics has me shaking my head.

When the news broke, I thought maybe a) it was a mistake or b) the eventual explanation for the denial of access would make sense. Read more »

Imagine the scene: you’re the duty reporter making a round of calls in one of the UK’s quietest news patches on a Sunday afternoon.

Without being too macabre, you desperately want to hear of a crash, a shop fire or a brawl, anything to break the monotony of inputting submitted copy for the Clubs & Associations page.

Suddenly – just as the police control room is strangely too busy to answer – the newsroom’s phones and your mobile all start ringing at once. Read more »