Family commitment to newspaper trade

I'm one of the few people who can say this, but spending time with our company chairman now is definitely déjà vu, writes Shirley Tart.

A rolling back of the clock, wandering down 50 or so years to those exciting, early 1960s days when we were creating something brand new, cutting edge and making newspaper history in the process.

Doug Graham has had a distinguished career with our parent company, Midland News Association, is group chairman and publisher, and retains a keen interest and involvement in our newspapers and magazines. He was at the heart of it all when the Shropshire Star began.

And as a very young employee, I was also there on that day in 1964 when the presses rolled for the first time.

The first thing I asked when I met the boss for lunch and a chat at his Shropshire home near Bridgnorth was what he would like me to call him for this feature. Would it be Mr Graham, Mr Douglas, sir, chairman … but as I was reeling off the options, he very firmly stopped me and said "I'd like you to call me Doug, just Doug."

While he is indeed our respected chairman, he and I are also both deputy lieutenants of Shropshire – he for much longer and more significantly than I – so I know what his contribution to our community life has been down the years.

Nowadays, he also enjoys precious time spent with wife Sara, their three dogs and the surviving cat – one of two which Doug named after a CBeebies children's TV programme!

He remains on good form and despite some health problems, still takes a keen interest in all that goes on in and around the county.

As, indeed, he does with the newspaper industry to which he has dedicated his working life and which remains so important to him.

An heir in his time to a great family business, Doug has seen enormous changes both in his own company and in the industry generally.

There have been good years, the not so good, challenges and sometimes those agonising decisions which have had to be made.

There is also much of which to be very proud. Not least, that 50 long and eventful years ago, Shropshire and Mid Wales became part of a significant media revolution as a new daily newspaper was born.

The Shropshire Star swept in on a wave of goodwill and to an enormously warm welcome. As with any significant and new business venture, it was a risk but the move paid off. And the 19,000 a night circulation of the Shropshire edition of the Wolverhampton Express & Star – which remains the biggest regional daily – was eventually to grow to a whopping 100,000 copies in different editions of the newspaper to reflect the different parts of our county.

As a regional achievement, it was a cracker.

Half a century on, we are still on e of the largest regional newspapers in the country, an achievement now firmly acknowledged by the man whose father led the original drive to bring an evening newspaper to the county and its borders.

"It really has been a great success story," he says.

Today, that exciting, fledgling venture has matured to become well established, well respected and as a 50-year-old, the Shropshire Star has long been an intrinsic part of the life and community of our county and beyond.

But growth, success and survival have not been without their tough times, something acknowledged by the chairman. He says: "We have had some excellent people working for us over those years right through the company. And the biggest sadness has been loss of staff and when major changes have had to be made which has affected the workforce.

"The industry has always had challenges but the present big one is that people are not reading newspapers every day as they once might have done, no matter how good the paper is. And that is something we have all had to face."

Which of course is why the Shropshire Star has so enthusiastically and successfully also embraced the new technology era.

But back to those early and exciting days when the decision was taken that Shropshire was ready for a newspaper of its own. And all these years on, our present chairman reflects: "Father believed that Shropshire was big enough to have a paper of its own and that's where the talking began. The way in was through the old Wellington Journal but then we heard that a Birmingham newspaper might want to go down the same path as well. But in the end it worked out for us.

"It was exciting to start a new newspaper, the technology was all new and the Shropshire Star was the first daily paper in the UK on which it had been used. So was it the right thing to do? Yes of course and it was quite a step forward."

And all at a time when there were dozens of evening newspapers still operating in the UK but many of them were beginning to decline.

So the Shropshire Star with its new web offset system of printing, the first daily paper in the UK to use it with its facility for colour, was indeed a phenomenon.

Doug says: "Perhaps it is a miracle to still be alive, this is going to be an eventful year and time for a little celebration, time to thank everyone for all they have done and all they have been. My hopes now are that we can continue serving Shropshire and Mid Wales in the years ahead."

• See also: We're 50 years old this year - join us for celebrations and memories