Mike Packwood

Once a week all over the land, the head of circulation at a newspaper will receive an email. The often dreaded sales figures email. On this your career rests. You are either saved for another week and the children can eat, or you’ve just added another nail to your circulation career coffin. Because, be in no doubt, if the figures are poor, It’s all your fault . The email will have come from your stats team, or perhaps from the wholesaler who handles your logistics for you. It will have been shared at precisely the same time you received it with many stakeholders throughout the business, such as editors, the MD, sales directors and the like, as well as your own team. There is nowhere to hide. You can hear the silence around the building as everyone opens the email and digests the contents, line by line and minus figure by minus figure. Then, depending on the size of your building there may be about 10 minutes respite before you hear the MD’s or (even worse) the editors feet...

It's a shame that Northampton no longer has its Herald and Post free newspaper. It closed its doors, or rather had its doors closed for it in 2016 by Trinity Mirror, who ended up being its final custodian. Its closure was inevitable. The newspaper marketplace has changed beyond recognition since the Post, as it what originally called, first hit the streets in the mid 70's, and its true to say that it had never been the same since it moved from private ownership - owned by people who launched and nurtured it, to being just another very small cog in a mammoth corporate wheel (of misfortune). The second home of Post Newspapers: Newspaper House in Derngate I began my newspaper career at the Post in the late 70's as a paper boy and then as a van driver (part tine while still attempting to be a pop-star, details of which you'll find elsewhere on this blog). I think I joined full time about 5 years into the life of the Post. It had begun as a paid for title competing wit...

Io sono il nipote di Robert Brimer Watson, uno degli primi paracadutisti inglesi chi fecero parte dell’incursione nel confine di Calitri di febbraio 1941, si chiamò ‘L’operazione Colosso’. Fu la prima volta che l’esercito Brittanico usò i paracaduti per un’incursione nel territorio nemico, e intendevano distruggere l’acquedotto sul Tragino. Dopo l’incursione, lo squadrone inglese intendeva andare a piedi al imbocco della Sele, sud di Napoli a ritrovare un sottomarino inglese, pero stati catturati e signor Watson stato imprigionato per due anni, in gran parte a Sulmona, e finalmente evase da prigione e scappato a piedi in Svizzera. So che questa storia successe molti anni fa, pero io vorrei sapere cos’é successo a mio nonno, sopratutto del periodo ‘in fuga’, e mi chiedo se ci sia qualcuno a Calitri che potrebbe aiutarmi risolvere questo mistero. Se potrebbe aiutarmi, il mio indirizzo é mikepackwood6@gmail.com Vi ringrazio. _______________________________________...