Mick Shields (newspaper manager)

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Ronald McGregor Pollock Shields (30 July 1921 – 25 December 1987), known as Mick Shields, was a British newspaper manager.

Born on 30 July 1921, Shields attended Swanage Grammar School and the University of London before serving in the Royal Artillery;[1] he was a gunnery officer during the Second World War and was later put in charge of police in the Italian city of Trieste.[2]

Shields ended his military service as a major. After demobilisation in 1948, he joined Associated Newspapers, the parent company of the Daily Mail and the Daily Sketch. He became interested in market research, setting up , and computing. He was promoted to group advertisement director in 1963. In 1970, he was appointed managing director of Associated.[1] The following year, the Mail and the Sketch were merged in an effort to stave off losses from both papers; Shields was a leading negotiator with the trade unions, which avoided strikes as Associated made staffing cuts to the newly merged, now-tabloid Daily Mail.[3]

Shields also led Associated's efforts to diversify its assets, by buying into the oil and travel industries.[1] He was appointed managing director of the Associated Newspapers Holdings Plc in 1986 and deputy chairman in 1987.[4] He died on 25 December 1987.[1] His obituary in The Times noted that he was "one of the leading figures of Fleet Street".[1]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c d e "Mr R. M. P. Shields", The Times (London), 29 December 1987, p. 10.
  2. ^ Richard Bourne, Lords of Fleet Street: The Harmsworth Family, Routledge Library Editions: Journalism (London and New York: Routledge, 2016 [1990]), p. 211.
  3. ^ Roy Greenslade, Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits from Propaganda (London: Pan Books, 2003), p. 260.
  4. ^ "Shields, Ronald McGregor Pollock", Who Was Who (online ed., Oxford University Press, December 2019). Retrieved 3 February 2020.
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