User:Newsmeister123

Danny Lockwood, born December 15, 1958 in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Newspaper editor and now publisher of independent newspaper and magazines, most significantly The Press which was involved in a two year libel battle with Dewsbury Labour MP Shahid Malik. Lockwood worked as a journalist on the Dewsbury Reporter, Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post besides spending a number of years working and playing rugby league in America and Australia, before becoming editor of the Dewsbury Reporter and Batley News series of newspapers in 1993. Regarded as an outspoken editor and columnist his weekly personal column Ed Lines won him the Yorkshire Press Awards columnist of the year award in 1995. He left the Reporter in 1999 and he was in quick succession editor of the Gloucestershire Gazette weekly group and Associate editor of Sport First before becoming group editor of the Lancaster Guardian. He set up his own publishing company Newspost in 2001 and founded The Press in 2002. In 2005 he won libel damages from the publishers of website Hold The Front Page after they carried a malicious web profile which said he had been an official of the BNP since 1993. In the same year The Press was the Newspaper Society Weekly Newspaper of the Year for the North East, North West and Yorkshire. In 2002 Lockwood also began publishing the rugby league newspaper League Weekly following the demise of the long-standing Rugby Leaguer. Among his associate editors is the BBC's Ray French. In 2006 The Press was named Yorkshire Weekly Newspaper of the Year, the same year that it began a long libel battle with the local MP Shahid Malik. This arose over comments published in both The Press and Dewsbury Reporter by local Conservative councillor Jonathan Scott, but the MP only prosecuted the independent paper. After a two week trial at the London High Court (Malik v NewsPost & Others)in November 2007 the jury were deadlocked and a retrial ordered although the two sides subsequently agreed to drop the case. Lockwood had a notable career as an amateur rugby league player mostly for Dewsbury Celtic and Dudley Hill but also representing Yorkshire and BARLA Great Britain where he was a prolific points scorer playing on the wing or centre, with a reputation as a proficient goalkicker. In America he played several seasons of rugby union for top California club Belmont Shore RFC and he played a season of semi-professional rugby league in Australia in the early 1990s in their Winfield Cup competition. Lockwood is married with two children and lives in Dewsbury.