CAMBRIAN News owner, Sir Ray Tindle, has been handed a special accolade at this year’s Regional Press Awards.

Sir Ray (pictured) was named this year’s recipient of the special award in recognition of his support of local newspapers over his illustrious career.

He started his first paper on a troop ship to the Far East and then spent his £300 demob money buying the Tooting and Balham Gazette.

Now his empire includes more than 200 titles, including the Cambrian News, which he purchased in 1998, with a combined circulation of more than 1.4 million.

Sir Ray Tindle is founder and chairman of Britain’s biggest independent family-owned local newspaper group. The keyword there is local and it is Sir Ray’s passion for local news that earned him the Journalists’ Charity special award. Often standing against the tide, Sir Ray, a strong believer in the future of print, has opened new papers where others have closed them and rescued titles that were destined for extinction.

Most famously in the 1970s he bought the West Wales Observer which had covered a large area of west Wales but had ceased publication. Resurrecting its original title of the Tenby Observer, he told journalists to reject any story that was not about Tenby.

Soon afterwards the paper was breaking even and within a few years, the circulation had risen from 2,700 to 7000. Not immune from the immense financial pressures facing our industry, staff numbers have fallen, but Tindle Newspapers has never introduced compulsory redundancies and the group remains free of debt.

The awards ceremony heard how Roy Greenslade described him as the grand old man of local newspapers and Prince Charles says he is a legend.

He has supported the Journalists’ Charity for many years and he has achieved the ultimate accolade: the bar at the charity’s nursing home in Dorking is named after him in recognition of his generous contribution to the cost of building the home.

Unfortunately Sir Ray, who is now in his 91st year, was unable to attend the awards and Mick Ferris, editor in chief of the Yellow Advertiser, a Tindle newspaper, accepted the award on his behalf.