Editor
of the Barking and Dagenham Post, Dave Russell, is retiring and will
leave 41 years to the day since he started on the paper.
After joining as a junior reporter in 1964 he rose through the ranks to become deputy editor in 1971.
He
left the paper for his first editorship for a stable of papers under
the News of Essex . In 1985 he returned to his beloved Post and has now
been at the helm for 12 years.
“You always have a fondness for the paper you started out on,” he said.
The
weekly paid-for, now published by Archant, was founded in 1923 and
covered the Beacontree Estate, which at the time was the largest
council housing project in Europe.
Russell said: “It’s a great news area.
Dagenham gets a bad press – people say no one wants to move there but the people here are the salt of the earth.”
The
paper has had to evolve as the East End has changed so much. “It’s not
so much the cockney knees-up area any more. We’ve seen so much cultural
change with a larger degree of ethnic people here and we have moved the
paper to include everyone.”
Russell is looking forward to travelling around the UK with his wife Julie who worked alongside him on the Post as news editor.
He
said he’d be happy to help the paper every now and again, but added: “I
certainly won’t be getting up in the morning saying ‘have we got any
leads?’ – I don’t like dogs!”
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