This is an updated piece written by Stuart Kuttner, former Evening Standard reporter from 1963 and news editor between 1971 and 1977, for a staff reunion in June 2017. It recalls an era of the London newspaper in which its paid circulation ranged from 600,000 to 800,000 daily. The Evening Standard of our day was a superb newspaper with an immutable credo: to break the news and set the agenda.
The newsdesk – the vibrant engine room of the newspaper – was proud and demanding, and celebrated in Fleet Street. Whether it was the appalling 1975 Moorgate tube train crash – with 42 fatalities – or the dramatic capture of Harry Roberts on the run after the remorseless slaughter of three police officers in 1966, the Standard was first with the news and first with the detail. The Lord Lucan murder case, late on a November night in 1974, was a classic example.
The competition was every other newspaper plus radio and TV. When a major story appeared in the following day’s papers I wanted to know why we had not had a whiff the day before – regardless of when it had broken! [Read more: Evening Standard set to go from daily to weekly print edition ] Neither an editor nor a news editor could have asked for a more passionate and diligent team of reporters. Trained and overawed by the headmasterly, suave Edwardian figure of Ronald Harry Picton Hyde OBE, who I had the good fortune to succeed, every member of the team was a salivating bloodhound; not least, but not only, double-channel.
