Sir Harold Evans: The man who changed the face of local journalism
Tributes have been paid to the editor who arguably did more than any other to shape what modern-day journalism has become.
The death of Sir Harold Evans, 92, who injected a previously unseen level of campaigning, public interest journalism into local journalism during his time as editor of the Northern Echo, was announced by his family yesterday.
Eccles-born Sir Harold began his journalistic career in 1944, aged 16, riding his bicycle daily from his home in Newton Heath to the offices of the Ashton-under-Lyne Reporter.
He was one of a number of schoolboy reporters, filling in for men who had been drafted to fight in the Second World War, the Manchester Evening News reported in an obituary yesterday.
“As the greatest journalist of his era Sir Harold Evans was not just an observer but a participant, uncovering injustice and wrongdoing and shaping history as he fought for ordinary people,” wrote Neal Kealing the MEN’s chief reporter.
While his time at the Sunday Times is quite rightly legendary, helping shape the newspaper’s investigative zeal and the world-famous Insight team. the impact he had on local news cannot be under-estimated either.
After a spell doing National Service, Sir Harold studied at Durham University before returning to journalism.
Neal wrote: “It was in the forge of the thriving newspaper industry of post-war Manchester and Lancashire that Evans was moulded. And Manchester was the city dearest to his heart, even as he conquered the world in print.
“He joined the Manchester Evening News as a sub-editor in 1952, a time when hundreds of journalists worked in the city and 26 newspapers were written, edited and published here.
“Having finished a social studies degree at Durham University he received a telegraph: “Report Monday. Manchester Evening News.”
“As a young leader writer he began his first campaign — to banish traffic from St Ann’s Square, inspired by the squares he had seen in Bruges.
“He got an artist to draw a traffic-free plaza version of St Ann’s with cafés and fountains. It took 20 years to become a reality, but was an insight into his visionary mind — Manchester has fully embraced the ‘continental ambition’ he was pushing for all those years ago.”
During his time at the MEN, Sir Harold won a Harkness Fellowship to study in the USA. According to the BBC, he returned determined to inject ‘the crusading ambitions’ of American newspapers into the regional press in the UK.
After rising to assistant editor of the MEN, he moved in 1961 to become editor of the Northern Echo in Darlington, where his work in regional media is best known.
In an article published yesterday, Northern Echo chief features writer described Sir Harold as ‘the man who put fuel in the Northern Echo’s rocket.’
Chris wrote: “It was on the Echo that Sir Harry cut his campaigning teeth — it was here that his campaign to get the cervical smear available on the NHS began.
“He campaigned against inflammable nightclothes and called for improved road safety. He embraced the teenage spirit of the age, and he held a son et lumiere concert which raised money to floodlight Durham Cathedral for the first time — a forerunner of today’s Lumiere festivals.
“He was most proud of his campaign to get the cervical smear test introduced free on the NHS.
“He’d heard that Vancouver was trialling the test and didn’t understand why it shouldn’t be tried in somewhere like the North-East. He sent a reporter to Canada to investigate.
“After six weeks the reporter returned to Darlington and said the world expert on cervical smears was in Gateshead hospital but no-one would listen to him.
“Evans listened — and persuaded the Government to introduce a life-saving trial in the North-East in 1966.
“His oddest campaign was when he offered his photographers a fiver if they could capture the ‘Teesside smell’ — a notorious and noxious waft that drifted the length of the Tees Valley and which the Teesside chemical industry refused to accept existed.
“By chance, within five minutes of photographer Ossie Stanford taking a picture of a sunny Stockton lane, the haze which accompanied the smell descended on the lane, blotting out the sun. The before and after pictures forced ICI to accept that its emissions were an issue and Evans began to clean up the Teesside environment.”
The changes he made to the Northern Echo were repeated across the industry.
Chris wrote: “When Evans arrived at the Echo, it was deeply rooted in its community but hadn’t done much campaigning for decades. “A rocket needs a solid base and The Northern Echo was deeply rooted in the region,” he once said. “All I had to do was put some fuel in the engine…”
“First of all he modernised it so it sounded like a newspaper for the 1960s. He channelled the “vigour and bluntness” that he found on the North-East cultural scene through writers like Sid Chaplin and artists like Norman Cornish to create a clean and punchy paper.”
Indeed, the masthead on the modern-day Northern Echo is the same as the one he introduced in 1965.
In 1967 he moved to the Sunday Times, where he was editor until 1981.
Not surprisingly, tributes have been paid from across journalism.
Ian Murray, executive director of the Society of Editors has paid tribute: “Sir Harold Evans was a giant among journalists who strove to put the ordinary man and woman at the heart of his reporting.
“He took on the establishment without fear or favour and earned a deserved reputation as one of the world’s greatest editors.
“In his 70-years as a journalist he never lost sight of the need to maintain integrity in our profession. He was a true champion of a free press and holding the powerful to account.”
Ian MacGregor, Editor Emeritus at the Telegraph and chair of the Society of Editors added: “So many journalists like me grew up in awe of Harold Evans.
”He was a brilliant, fearless editor whose investigations and campaigns should be read and studied by all would-be reporters.”
Crawford Gillan, co-author of Essential English with Sir Harold Evans, reflected on their time together working on the indispensable journalism textbook: “It was a great honour and privilege to work with Harry, updating his inspirational Essential English textbook,” Gillan told the SoE.
“The intervening years since the book’s original publication date had done nothing to diminish Harry’s relish for the project. I fondly remember his impromptu phone calls (usually as he travelled across Manhattan) and how he buzzed with ideas and suggestions on how to make the content more relevant for the digital age.
“His energetic enthusiasm was infectious and reflects the enormous contribution he made to journalism.”
Peter Sands, editor of The Northern Echo from 1989–1993, said: “My parents bought me a copy of Pictures on a Page by Harold Evans in the mid-70s and it inspired me to become a journalist.
“That I followed in his footsteps and became the editor of The Northern Echo was one of my proudest moments. His presence was always there in the Echo building and made me, and his other successors, determined to carry on the campaigning tradition he introduced to the paper.
“He changed the way newspapers operated — from covering community news to actually getting things done, tackling injustice and writing wrongs.
“Sir Harry was voted the greatest newspaper editor of all time — and nobody could argue with that.”
A leader article in the Yorkshire Post read: “The newspaper titan Sir Harold Evans was a pioneer of the type of public interest journalism that defines a free press — unmasking the truth about the scandals that officialdom want to suppress.
“That he did so with distinction at, first, the Northern Echo and then The Sunday Times, is testament to this country’s finest investigative journalist who, alongside fearless teams, exposed shameful injustices, like the thalidomide scandal, long before Freedom of Information laws made it easier to access sensitive documents.
“In his memoir, My Paper Chase, he observed: “I liked the maxim by Sir Linton Andrews, editor of The Yorkshire Post, that an editor of a great newspaper was the temporary custodian of a tradition.”
“Yet this in fact does a disservice to Sir Harold; an editor who gave a voice to the voiceless and redefined the meaning of accountability to show how newspapers could utilise their influence for the greater good.
“And that needs placing on the record.”
