Silly Season

THE newsroom is cloaked with a faint heaviness and everyone is feeling weary.

Having survived the not-too-silly-season that was August and after gearing up for an Autumn of hard news, an event we were unprepared for has frozen us in our pace.

We were told at the end of last week that the 137-year-young Enfield Gazette is going to be axed, leaving most of us reeling with shock and disbelief. That, and the fact that one of us is going to lose our job within a month.

There was no warning sign prior to our publisher's announcement but having sat through the ten or fifteen minutes it took her to deliver the news a swathe of nausea swept through the office and all of us had to get outside for some air.

The tragedy of this circumstance is that not only is the decision resulting in the death of a newspaper but one of us is going to be stuck without a means to live.

We are of course fighting the decision, and today went public with it, trying to get as many contacts, politicians and community groups as possible to write to the owner, Sir Ray Tindle in a bid to save it, and save us.

But at the moment I'm feeling pretty numb about the whole thing. And angry that it's all happening too fast.