History
The Herald Express was born out of the rivalry between two evening papers, each of which produced local editions for Torbay - an area which includes Torquay, Paignton and Brixham - and first appeared in its own right as a title on Monday, July 13, 1925, when the two sensibly decided to amalgamate.
Devon's premier publishing centres had always been at Plymouth - where Sir Leicester Harmsworth, brother of newspaper baron Lord Northcliffe, controlled the city's Evening Herald - and at Exeter - where Sir James Owen had the county's other evening title, the Express and Echo.
First into Torquay had been the Exeter-sponsored Torbay express and South Devon Echo in 1921, followed shortly afterwards by the Plymouth-controlled Torbay Herald. The latter was produced in Braddons Hill Road, the former nearby in Union Street.
The competition was intense and Torquay of the day clearly did not have the commercial output to support two evening titles. Eventually the papers merged, Harmsworth having acquired his rival, to become the "Torbay Herald and Express", and printed in Braddons Hill Road. Later this was simplified to "Herald Express".
It has had the distinction of being based in Fleet Street, for the front entrance and office to the Braddons Hill works was located close-by in Torquay's main shopping thoroughfare.
It was not until July 1980 that the paper moved to custom-built headquarters on the northern edge of the town. Throughout the years since its founding, the Herald Express has been closely linked with its Exeter sister paper within the Western Times Company and the Northcliffe Group. However, in 1991, it became a new and independent operating company in its own right within Northcliffe as Herald Express Publications Ltd. During its lifetime, it has had nine editors, including the present incumbent, Jim Parker.
In March 1996, Northcliffe Newspapers Group restructured its publishing interests in the South West of England. The restructure saw the appointment of a new regional management team to direct the operations of Northcliffe's daily newspaper centres at Plymouth, Exeter and Torquay.
Following many changes in the structure of the Torquay operation, the Herald Express printing press was closed in November 1996. The head office in Barton Hill Road retained its existing editorial, advertising and newspaper sales departments, but from then on the paper was to be printed at the Western Morning News building in Plymouth.
On June 17, 2011, it was announced that it would become a weekly publication from Thursday July 21, 2011 with the loss of around 16 members (half) of the editorial staff.
Read more about this topic: Herald Express
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)