1976 'Newsdesk' game found in a charity shop in Tonbridge

I found this curious ' international reporting' game lurking unloved in the back of a Tonbridge charity shop yesterday.

It has a wonderful comic-strip style James Bond type cover and comes with a yellow plastic telex machine that doesn't use any batteries as well as a map and cards with news stories. It's all rather lovely and 'basic'.

If only my parents would have given me one of these - maybe I would have taken up a different path as I used to imagine I was 'an editor' when I was ten and even had my own 'letters-to-the-editor page and 'ran' two 'magazines'. (It could still be in the attic). I did use a telex machine though.

This is a game where you can apparently 'edit your own newspaper and use a combination of global strategy and luck to be first with the front page news. Use realistic telex messages'.  It also reads 'all the excitement of international reporting - competitive, fast moving'.

Furthermore, 'each player is a newspaper editor. Each editor has a 'front page' to make up and 'each front page' has four blank spaces still to be filled. With the aid of a team of four reporters, the editor must collect stories to fill in these spaces. In the event of a two-player game' two newspapers each should be used. Either the player completing a paper removes one set of pawns from the board. The winner is the player who fills 'the front page'.

Now it would be fun to play this game with a set of modern citizen journalists but in the absence of this, perhaps, I can ask whether anyone has ever played this game and whether or not, they actually became a newspaper editor.

I think it is a great idea. As I look round the traditional shops, like Woolworths, I don't really see games that may help a child choose an 'alternative career' - although a being a Sudokuist can be very handy in many civil service jobs.