New editor Sue takes SNJ helm (From Stroud News and Journal)

New editor Sue takes SNJ helm

THIS week the SNJ's new editor Sue Smith took the helm to steer the paper through it's first edition under her leadership.

Sue has moved up through the ranks in Stroud, working as news editor for four years after a brief stint as a reporter.

She brings a wealth of experience to the job, having started her career as a cub reporter on Suffolk-based weekly the Bury Free Press before working in both the local and national press.

"I spent a goodly proportion of those first three years doing wedding reports and writing about giant golden sunflowers, which seemed to be all the rage at the time," she said. From there Sue went on to another weekly paper, the Oxford Journal, before heading to the south coast to work on the Brighton Journal.

Next stop was London, where she worked as a freelance for many of the national newspapers before landing a job on the Daily Mail.

Working as a showbiz reporter she interviewed all sorts of celebrities including Lenny Henry, Julie Walters, Nicholas Lyndhurst and Jerry Lee Lewis. In 1987 the newly-wed Sue moved to Wiltshire to start a family.

Keeping her hand in through freelance work while raising her children, Sue came back to full-time journalism at the SNJ. "I came full circle, back to local newspapers," she said.

"It's quite a common route for journalists, we do the gypsy trail moving round the country chasing bigger jobs and experience and very often end up back where we started.

"I'm obviously thrilled to get the job at the SNJ," she said. "It's a bit of a dream come true. "I love the paper and community it serves.

"I haven't got any immediate ambitions to radically change the SNJ, I aim to continue to improve it as we go along.

"Change needs to be subtle and people who enjoy the SNJ how it is should have no fears.

"Of course if I had a magic wand I would just double the size of the paper so we could get in all the news we have to try to squeeze in every week."