blamed the Office of Fair Trading for halting the deal. The office referred the newspaper deal to the Competition Commission, because of the possible monopoly it might create. This meant the cost of the deal and process of takeover would have increased. The last edition of the News was published on Thursday 8 December 2011, a day after the final Gazette. Northcliffe had intended to cease publication a week earlier but the editor and staff asked to publish a farewell souvenir issue looking back over the News's 156 years. History The first editor-proprietor of the News was Joseph Clayton, a bookseller, who soon discovered he needed a journalist, and brought in Henry Foster from The Spectator. Foster eventually became sole proprietor. When he died in 1885 his heirs sold to Parrett & Neves, publishers of the East Kent Gazette at Sittingbourne, George Neves becoming editor. He died in 1921. Neves was succeeded C. P. Wootton, H. J. Ross, Harry Couchman, and Eddie Albon. In 1959, Graham Parrett – great grandson of W. J. Parrett, whose company bought the News in 1885 – became editor until 1968 when he became managing director of Parrett & Neves' publishing company, Associated Kent Newspapers. His deputy Eric Wintle was promoted to editor and stayed in that role briefly (he later became the company’s editorial director) before Gerald Hinks took the editor’s chair in 1970. Hinks, a former editor of the Sheerness Times Guardian and East Kent Gazette, took the News and its sister paper the Chatham Standard through an era of great success and won many national newspaper awards. His editorship, characterised by a string of exclusive stories and robust journalism, was marred by the closure of Chatham Dockyard in 1984, an event that caused huge social change, severe depression to the Medway towns' fortunes, and a drop in the circulation of the News. Staff during this time include Michael Pearce, later editor of the Isle of Thanet Gazette and Thanet Times, Frank Dunkley, Jimmy Hodge, Ted Connolly and Christine Rayner, since 1995 editor of the East Kent Gazette series and editor of the News since 2008. In 1988 Parrett & Neves sold Associated Kent Newspapers to Emap. During this ownership, Hinks was replaced by Jon McElhill, formerly of the Mid-Sussex Times. The group was subsequently sold to its rivals, the Canterbury-based freesheet publishing group Adscene. McElhill was succeeded by Murray Evans, a former