Gordon remembered
The decision by the Variety Club to honour Gordon Linacre with a lifetime achievement award is long overdue. As Chairman of Yorkshire Post Newspapers, he was a pleasure to work with – not least because of his own superb network in the region. This meant, for instance, that he was frequently able to give me a steer on a story when I was Business Editor.
I recall on one occasion picking up the phone and being told by Gordon that I was wasting my time on a particular line of inquiry which I was then pursuing in connection with a Scarborough businessman. He was right. As I found out after making a few more calls of my own.
Gordon presided over a very different media environment. The Yorkshire Post was then one of the Big Beasts in regional journalism and not just a subsidiary of an over-geared Scottish newspaper chain. He believed in having fun and had no objection to his employees having fun – provided that they also did the job they were being paid to do. Accordingly, a key element of his hospitality involved a liberal supply of alcohol – in traditional journalistic manner. It’s definitely a different world today.
