Subscribers who have read the Axegrinder column in the April edition of Press Gazette will know that not one but two papers have recently been carrying bylines saying ‘Kent Journalist of the Year’.
In the Medway Messenger there is Alan Watkins while in the Gravesend Reporter one finds a column by Melody Foreman bearing the strapline ‘Kent Journalist of the Year’.
A little investigation reveals that Watkins was named Journalist of the Year this January, while Foreman picked up a ‘wild card’ award for her column in January 2005.
In Press Gazette, I predicted that Foreman, group editor of the Kentish Times series, was sure to ‘do the right thing and amend her strapline in the next year or so”.
Well, a copy of the latest issue of the Gravesend Reporter (see below) has just reached Axegrinder and Foreman’s strapline has not been ‘amended’ … it has vanished entirely.
Surely this is an over-reaction to our story. A strapline ‘2005 wild card award-winner’would have let the good people of Gravesend know they were honoured to be reading such a distinguished columnist.
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