By Jon Slattery
Northcliffe Newspapers has created an editor-in-chief role to oversee its newspapers and other media in Kent and Sussex.
Appointed to the new position is former Daily Express assistant
editor Roger Watkins, who is currently managing editor of the
four-title Brentwood Gazette series.
The editors of the Kent & Sussex Courier, the Sevenoaks Chronicle and the East Grinstead Courier will report to Watkins.
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Northcliffe
managing director Michael Pelosi said: “This is a new position created
to increase the amount of time spent on strategic issues facing us in
this hugely competitive area of the country.
“Roger brings with
him a wealth of experience, not just from weekly newspapers but from
senior positions he has held in regional and national newspapers in a
long and successful career in the industry.”
Northcliffe has recently appointed editors-in-chief at its newspaper centres in Bristol and Plymouth.
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Watkins,
who will be based in Tunbridge Wells from September, said: “I have
greatly enjoyed my five years as editor and latterly managing editor of
the Gazette. I shall miss my close and supportive colleagues there, but
I greatly look forward to the different challenges facing me in my new
role and working with such a professional team in Kent.”
Last
year Watkins was named winner of Campaign of the Year in the Essex
Journalist of the Year Awards for leading resistance to a sex shop in
Brentwood.
A staff member of the Daily Express for 26 years, he
worked in the paper’s Fleet Street, Manchester and Glasgow offices and
has previously been chief sub-editor, night editor and assistant editor
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