Lalor switches to Grimsby
Michelle Lalor, currently editor of the Scunthorpe Telegraph, is switching across to the Grimsby Telegraph to succeed Peter Moore who is retiring after 20 years as editor.
Lalor has been editor at Scunthorpe since 1999 and the paper was one of the few evenings to show a sales increase in the last regional ABC figures.
Her successor at Scunthorpe is Jon Grubb, deputy editor of the Nottingham Evening Post since 1997. Grubb started in journalism in 1989 on the Buckinghamshire Advertiser and held senior positions on the Gloucester Citizen at the time of the Fred West murder trial. He has been at Nottingham since 1995.
The decision to stay in house for the appointments is likely to be welcomed by senior Northcliffe editorial staff who saw the editorships of its Evening Herald, Plymouth, and Western Daily Press in Bristol being snapped up by outsiders with Fleet Street backgrounds.
Lalor’s career with Grimsby and Scunthorpe Newspapers began when she joined the Scunthorpe Telegraph and Target series as a junior reporter in 1988. She transferred to Grimsby as a senior reporter two years later and became assistant, and then deputy, news editor before returning to Scunthorpe as news editor.
Her career then took her to the Hull Daily Mail where she spent four years on the news desk and in new media before returning as assistant editor of the Grimsby Telegraph in 1998.
She said of the Grimsby paper: "This is a paper with a long and proud tradition of being at the heart of the community. The Telegraph has an extremely loyal readership and is a true champion of local people."
Moore retires from the Telegraph on 30 July. His newspaper career began as a trainee reporter in Beverley on the Hull Daily Mail where he worked until appointed editor of the Telegraph in 1982. Under his editorship, the Grimsby Telegraph pulled off two major national scoops. It discovered that Conservative Chancellor of th Exchequor Norman Lamont was resigning, from contacts with his mother in Grimsby, before any of the London-based political correspondents.
It also scooped the national football press by revealing that Graham Taylor was quitting as England manager. Taylor’s father was a former sports editor of the Scunthorpe Telegraph.
By Jon Slattery
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