Former Diss Express editor Ron Hunt has been named one of the top 40 people in the history of regional journalism by the Press Gazette.

Mr Hunt, who joined the paper in 1986 when it was the test bed for desktop publishing, has entered the Hall of Fame as his impressive career comes to a close.

Having started as an office boy in Leamington Spa, Mr Hunt moved to be editor-in-chief at West Suffolk Newspapers, editor of the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph and executive editor for Emap provincial newspapers.

"It is not a job, it is a way of life," he said.

"I think you are lucky if you are doing a job that you like and I have been lucky that my wife has put up with it for 54 years."

But the CV, or obituary as Mr Hunt refers to it, does not end there.

After spending six years as managing editor at the Diss Express, he decided it was time to work for himself and has been involved with journalism training ever since.

In 1991 he set up his own editorial training and design consultancy and a year later was awarded an MBE for services to journalism in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

Mr Hunt's last major contract starts in August and he will retire on October 31, eight days before his 76th birthday.

"The industry is very interesting now – I am interested in technology," he said.

"Young people are not buying papers but they are on the web."
But does this mean the end of local newspapers?

"Local newspapers will survive if they remember that they are supposed to be filled with local news," said Mr Hunt.

"There is always a love hate relationship between a local newspaper and its readers and that is right because we are there to tell them what is happening."

Informing readers has always been one of Mr Hunt's priorities and in 1976 he managed to do it single-handedly.

While working as editor of the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph, a strike was called by the National Union of Journalists.

"That is where I became super scab," he said.

"I had 72 journalists and eight photographers. They went on strike on December 6 and they didn't come back for six months so I produced the paper on my own."

Mr Hunt even managed to increase the paper's circulation, relying on some agency services and the help of local people who brought him all the news and features they could find.

"About a year later we won the Evening Newspaper of the Year award," he said.

Mr Hunt still keeps an eye on the Diss Express and is especially pleased with its website, which he describes as first class.

"The Diss Express has had its good times and its bad times but it has always fought for the town ," he said.

"That is what it should do – it has got to be part of the town.

"If it gets called the local rag then that is a compliment."
The Press Gazette awards, from the industry's trade magazine, were judged by a panel of some of the most respected names working in journalism today.

Editor Ian Reeves said it had been an increasingly painful selection process: "It was not simply longevity or worthiness that they were looking for, but a degree of influence and even fame that marked candidates out of the ordinary."

catherine.morris@dissexpress.co.uk