Better Than Working

The clatter of ancient typewriters banging out stories that would be set into hot metal in the furnace-like conditions of a subterranean composing room.

That was the way of life that greeted Paul Dale as he began his career in journalism 45 years ago. From a tranquil backwater at the Reading Chronicle and Berkshire Mercury, where reporters judged success on the number of pints of beer they could consume, to the more cerebral pastures of the Oxford Mail and Oxford Times, Dale gradually learnt his trade as a local government correspondent before being appointed the Coventry Evening Telegraph's Political Editor in 1986.

Better Than Working traces Dale's early life and follows him on a trail that would coincide with the decline of multi-edition printed newspapers and the rise of web-based media.