Derek Tucker to retire at Press and Journal

Derek Tucker, editor of the Press and Journal, is to retire after 18 years in charge of the Aberdeen title, the paper reports today.

Tucker, 57, who joined the P&J from the Express & Star, Wolverhampton, will step down on the 14th of January. He is the longest serving editor of a Scottish paper.

Aberdeen Journals managing director Alan Scott said he was grateful for all Tucker had brought to the Press and Journal over the last 18 years. “Derek’s track record speaks for itself,” he said. “It is thanks to the high standards that he has always set that the Press and Journal enjoys the reputation it has today and, as a colleague and a friend, I hope he has a very long and happy retirement."

Under Tucker's leadership, the Press and Journal has risen to be the third highest-selling regional daily newspaper in the UK, behind the Express & Star in Wolverhampton and the Liverpool Echo. Last year, the P&J was named 'Newspaper of the Year (circ above 40,000)' at the Regional Press Awards, then run by Press Gazette.

Tucker says what has made him most proud is the paper's fund-raising for local community groups: “We have raised something like £10 million for good causes in my time, including £5 million for the Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital, Friends of Anchor, Saving Sight in Grampian, Ucan and now the appeal for a Maggie’s cancer centre in Aberdeen.

“Our Gift of Life campaign encouraged 5000 people to sign the organ donor register and thousands more joined the Anthony Nolan Trust’s register of potential bone marrow donors because of the Millie Forbes appeal.

“It has given me an enormous amount of pleasure to see these things happen - not because of anything I did but because of what it says about the readers of the Press and Journal and the sense that this is very much their local paper.”

Tucker, who has twiced served as a member of the Press Complaints Commission, added: “I would like to think I am leaving the Press and Journal in good shape.”

• The Press and Journal is now owned by the Dundee based D. C. Thomson media group, after being sold by the Daily Mail and General Trust in 2006.

Hat Tip: allmediascotland