The Packet Newspapers are a series of weekly local newspapers in west Cornwall (UK) owned by the Newsquest Group. The titles include:
The range of titles started with the Falmouth Packet, launched in 1855 and named after the Packet mail service which made the port of Falmouth the premier centre of international communications for 150 years from 1688 onwards. The newspaper came into being as the Packet service died out, and was published initially as a local journal carrying national and international news. For many years it was owned by J H Lake and Co., a jobbing printer, but was later bought by the Beaverbrook (Express Newspapers) group. Folklore maintains that the then boss of the Daily Express, Max Aitken, a keen yachtsman, acquired the paper because he thought it came with a permament mooring in Falmouth Harbour. During the Beaverbrook years, the Packet group grew to include ten titles - five paid-for titles, and five free - covering the whole of West Cornwall. Among them were the St Ives Packet, the Penzance Packet, the Penryn Packet and the Cornwall Courier at Bodmin. Along with the Kidderminster Shuttle and the Royston Crow, the Falmouth Packet was rated among the most unusual and memorable newspaper titles in Britain. Among its trainee reporters was Nicholas Coleridge, later to be head of the Conde Nast magazine empire. Probably its longest-serving editor was Jimmy Prior, who occupied the chair for 25 years spanning the Second World War. He was 74 years old when he bequeathed the job, along with 'a huge pile of copy', to Alan Symonds, a young Falmothian just back from war service, who was to retain the position until the mid-fifties, when he moved to Kent to edit a large group of weeklies. Several of its most colourful editors had Fleet Street connections. Among them were Lance Sampson, former industrial correspondent with The Daily Worker (now Morning Star), Roy Standring of The Daily Telegraph, the author and sports writer John Marquis (formerly of Reuters and Thomsons) and Ken Thompson, a noted freelance who wrote for The Sunday Express and many other titles. Since the war, its longest serving editors were Alan Symonds (nine years 1947-56), John Marquis (nearly ten years 1986-95) and Terry Lambert (12 years 1995-2007). Marquis, an award-winning investigative reporter, went on to edit the leading daily newspaper in the Bahamas, The Tribune, where he was to emerge as a controversial figure during his decade-long editorship. The Packet group was 'rationalised' under Newsquest ownership, with a reduction of the number of titles. The Falmouth Packet remains the group flagship.