Long-serving Hull Daily Mail editor John Meehan steps down

John Meehan, editor of the Hull Daily Mail and Northcliffe's longest-serving daily newspaper editor, is to step down after 14 years with publisher.

Before taking up the editorship of the Mail, Meehan was editor of the Express and Echo in Exeter and before that editor of news agency UK News.

As well as editing the Mail, Meehan has been regional editorial director for Northcliffe in the North East for the past five years.

Under his editorship the Mail has won several awards, including Yorkshire Daily Newspaper of the Year in five of the past eight years and Daily Newspaper of the Year in the 2008 Regional Press Awards.

In an email to staff this morning, managing director Steve Auckland said that Meehan had informed him in April of his desire to step down, adding that the date had now been set for 14 October.

Meehan said: "It has been an absolute pleasure and a privilege to have been the editor of the Hull Daily Mail and to have played a significant part in the development of the brilliant business we have in Hull.

"I have been fortunate to have worked with so many creative, talented and hugely committed colleagues in Hull and elsewhere in Northcliffe. I wish all of you continued success.

"My 14 years as a Northcliffe editor have gone by like a flash – it has been an amazing journey, full of highlights and lots of fun. I will be sad to say goodbye to Northcliffe and to the Mail, but at the same time I am hugely excited by the opportunity to take my career in a new direction."

He will be succeeded by Neil Hodgkinson, currently editorial director at Cumbrian Newspapers Media Group.

Hodgkinson began his career in 1979, on the West Lancashire Evening Gazette in Blackpool, where he started out as a reporter before rising to deputy news editor. In 1987 he moved to the Lancashire Evening Post (LEP) as news editor and later became deputy editor.
 
After the LEP there was a stint as Yorkshire Evening Post deputy editor, before a return as editor of the LEP in Preston and then a move back to the Yorkshire Evening Post as editor in 1999.

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