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Alan Slingsby, who has died aged 76, was a journalist-philanthropist admired for putting his media skills at the service of the community. After training in the 1970s on the sub-editors’ desk at the Morning Star, he produced publications for trade unions, local groups and countless individuals.

One union journalist designated Alan “designer to the labour movement”. He worked for unions for students, teachers, firefighters and civil servants, for the TUC itself and naturally for the National Union of Journalists, from 1991 to 2009 as freelance production designer of the Journalist magazine.

I was editor at the time, but had worked with him since meeting on the independent leftwing magazine the Leveller in the mid-70s. He was a meticulous and fast operator, if occasionally irascible.

Born in Perivale, west London, Alan was the son of Doreen (nee Robinson) and Charles Slingsby, an investment manager, and had two sisters, Janet and Angela. He went to Hampton grammar school, then graduated in American studies from Manchester University in 1970.

While there, Alan edited the student newspaper, then called the Independent, and went straight to the Morning Star. During this time he also worked at the Leveller on a part-time voluntary basis for about a year.

He was then editor of several public service and trade union publications, starting with the Society of Civil and Public Servants’ paper, Opinion (1980-84), then the Teacher, the paper of the National Union of Teachers (now NEU), until 1987, then the weekly Ilea News (the organ of the Inner London Education Authority). While at the Journalist, he also worked for the TUC and the Fire Brigades Union paper, the Firefighter.

Alan displayed a proclivity for the colour orange in his wardrobe, and when he still had hair it was red. The leader of a pub quiz team, he was spectacularly well informed and it was hard to better him in politics, literature and history, or jazz or flamenco music.

In 2006 he married Linda Quinn. In 2015, the two took over the Brixton Blog and Bugle, a news blog and free monthly newspaper in south London, where he lived and worked for more than 40 years. He trained young people in community journalism, but, lacking the funds to pay even himself it was hard to hold on to them as they went off to colleges or jobs.

For any number of friends and acquaintances Alan would produce the goods : publicity for a gallery for the work of exiled artists or for a promising playwright, a book of poems for the friend of a friend – never refusing a request but invariably refusing payment.

Last year, as a lifelong supporter of the Palestinian people, he was asked to join a new publication, the Palestine News. He had taken part in an online meeting of the team only a couple of hours before he died suddenly at home.

Linda died in 2021. He is survived by Janet and Angela.