Two experienced sports journalists – Mel Booth and Anthony Vickers – have stepped down from their respective titles, the Huddersfield Daily Examiner and the Teesside Gazette.
Each has been at their title for 30 years, with Booth (above, right) serving as Sports Editor at the Examiner since 2006, and Vickers (above, left) being football writer at the Gazette, covering Middlesbrough FC for 28 years.
The two papers are sister titles, with both owned by Reach plc.
Booth joined the Examiner as chief football writer in 1985, having been at the Holme Valley Express, Barnsley Chronicle, and Sheffield Morning Telegraph.
Examiner Huddersfield Town reporter Steven Chicken wrote: “It has been a pleasure working with and getting to know Mel during my so-far relatively short time at the Examiner.
“[He] has been a wealth of invaluable knowledge – about the club and its history, about the finer points of day-to-day reporting, and most importantly, about the best pubs to visit on long away trips. I already considered myself a writer when I arrived at the Examiner 18 months ago, but Mel taught me how to be a journalist, for which I will always be grateful.
“I know I’m not the only sports writer to have passed through the Examiner who feels that way.”
Vickers wrote a farewell piece in his paper on August 28th, saying: “It will be a massive wrench to leave by far the best gig in Teesside. It has been far more than a job for me. It has been an evangelical calling. And it has been about far more than football.
“The Gazette is my paper. My birth was announced in it and so were the births of my children. My parents’ marriage and mine too. Every milestone marked. And not just my family.
“The Gazette has been part of the social fabric of Middlesbrough and of Teesside forever. And the football club is too. Middlesbrough Football Club is the social glue of a proud and passionate people and it is central to our sense of identity and civic pride, our public face to the world.
“The two institutions have been entwined for generations through twists and turns, success and despair and between them have shaped and recorded our history and folklore, the magic moments caught on the back page and curated carefully in a hundred thousand schoolboy scrapbooks and a pile of old pinks.”
