By Sarah Lagan
Former
editor of the Stroud News & Journal and the Gloucester Gazette
Series, Skip Walker, is returning to the Wilts & Gloucester
Standard after a 10-year break to edit the paper.
She replaces former editor of seven years Peter Davison, who has left to go freelance.
Walker will be replaced at the Gazette by Swindon Advertiser feature writer Catherine Turnbull.
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Walker
left her home city of London in 1982 to join the now defunct
Marlborough Times and later joined the Wilts & Gloucester Standard
as chief sub and then news editor.
She got her first editorship on the Stroud News & Journal where she remained for nine years.
A
year ago Walker moved to the three-edition Gloucester Gazette as
editor, becoming the first person to have edited all three of
Gloucestershire’s paid-for weekly titles.
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She said: “I would have
stayed at the Gazette had this editorship not come up, as it takes at
least two years to make a proper impression. The Standard is a paper to
which I am very attached and the decision was more to do with my heart
than my head.”
One of the priorities under her editorship is to “squash the news in”.
She said: “I want to have more news stories and features in the paper than it has ever had before.
“Weekly newspapers in particular do features exceptionally well.
“I
want short snappy news stories and a proper dedicated leisure section,
which is vital, I think, to the survival of newspapers, particularly
weeklies.”
Walker is due to launch the newspaper’s first campaign
under her editorship to save the local hospital from shutting its doors
to patients.
Catherine Turnbull was formerly news editor at the
Wilts & Gloucester Standard and was previously at the Dorset Echo
for five years and the Western Daily Press for three.
She joined
the Wilts & Gloucester news team in 1998 before moving to the
Advertiser, initially as a design sub, in 2002. After two years on the
news desk she moved to features in July last year.
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