Dougherty Appointed News Editor at Sunday Telegraph

A Scots journalist has been appointed news editor at the Sunday Telegraph.

Hugh Dougherty joins from the Daily Mail where he has been deputy news editor since November last year.

Prior to joining the Daily Mail, the 33 year-old was news editor at the Evening Standard, where he had worked for seven years.

Dougherty is the eldest son of Hugh Dougherty who retired in May this year after being public relations manager at East Renfrewshire Council for the past 15 years.

A geography graduate of Glasgow University, Dougherty Jnr initially dipped his toe into journalism by joining the now closed post-graduate journalism course jointly run by Strathclyde and Glasgow Caledonian universities.

On graduating, he was offered a post on the Dunfermline Press weekly newspaper but was only there for three weeks when he was headhunted by the Press Association news agency as a trainee in its Glasgow operation.

PA promptly moved him to New York to open an office there – and only weeks into the job he was among the first journalists to file back to the UK on the 9/11 tragedy.

After 18 months in New York, he returned to PA in Glasgow but was again headhunted – this time by the Evening Standard, eight years ago, as a general reporter, becoming home affairs correspondent a year later. Two years later, he was made assistant news editor, and then, four years ago, began his three-year stint as news editor.

With a background as a communications lecturer at Glasgow’s Stow College, his father progressed to Strathclyde Regional Council where he was the education press officer before being appointed to the top communications post for the newly-formed East Renfrewshire Council.