Why local newspapers have to change

Montgomery is right to ditch the traditional model,

but crowd-sourcing may not bring the results he wants

Listening to newspaper veterans trying to use digispeak can be as toe-curling as hearing grandad rap with a 15-year-old. The words don't sit easily on their tongues. But listen we must because they are trying to get their heads round the future. And that is bloody hard.

David Montgomery has scared a lot of people with his latest pronouncements about Local World, his stable of  more than 100 local papers. Embracing the jargon of the internet age, he has painted a futureworld where editors will be 'directors of content', journalists will be 'harvesters of content' and 'much of the human interface' involved in local news publishing will disappear.

Montgomery has a history of scaring people, having taken a scythe to much of Fleet Street over the years - a consistent cold-blooded cost-cutter, as Roy Greenslade described him. Now he has turned to the regional press, and his evidence to the Commons culture, media and sport committee this week sent many running for cover. The 'middle ages' model of a reporter going out on one story a day and returning to the office to write it up was highly wasteful and unsustainable. Journalists would have to develop new skills and take more responsibility for publishing their work in print and online.

To use such language is bound to be frightening in an era when every news organisation is cutting so hard that papers are  produced by one woman and her cat working from the local library.  'What more does he want us to do?' you can hear reporters cry. 'We're already manning reception, taking photographs and sweeping the floor when we should be getting stories.' Meanwhile subs crouch  under the table as they are once again identified as an endangered species.

There are economic truths that have to be acknowledged and dealt with. Traditional news operations are struggling and will continue to struggle until they not only up their game, but change it.  The first thing they have to learn, God help us, is to communicate - and that means listening as well as talking.

For the past five years, journalists in every kind of newsroom have heard nothing but cuts and job losses, coupled with demands that the survivors work on more and more platforms. The writer has to report, analyse, stand in front of a video camera and then tweet repeatedly. The sub has to prepare the resultant copy for print, web, tablet and mobile (often using four different pieces of software). Everyone feels overworked and under-appreciated. Everyone is fretting that quality is slipping. And the declining circulation figures are there for all to see.

Montgomery's vision for his Local World group may be scary. But at least it's a vision. And at least he is trying to communicate it - the trouble is, he isn't doing that very well. And his hard-man record does him no favours. What he is saying is that local newspapers are important (as SubScribe wrote last year) and that they can become profitable,  but that they have to be run in a different way.

David Montgomery, Photograph by InPublishing

If we stop and think about this calmly, it is only common sense. You can't keep piling extra work on a dwindling staff without reorganisation. But it has to be thought-through reorganisation, not simply random mergers of departments, editions, papers as is happening now. Managements at all levels have given the impression that the only tool they are capable of using is the knife, and subs fear that they are next for the chop. It's hardly surprising that you hear old hacks moaning 'They got rid of the typesetters, the printers, the proof readers, now they're going to get rid of us.'

The entire structure and hierarchy has to change, and once managements have decided how they are going to do that, they need to explain their strategy to their staff and win them over. Then they need to make sure they are making the most of the talent at their disposal. That news sub might be the world's expert on a certain genre of music or local archaeology or have a quirky writing style that would benefit the paper. Just because he spends his days with his head down correcting reporters' grammar or spelling doesn't mean that's all he knows or all he is fit for. It seems to me extraordinary the way newspapers cavalierly discard people with much to offer solely on the basis of the chair they happen to be sitting in when the cuts come.

Montgomery is telling us that it is impractical to continue with a system where half a dozen or more people handle a story from its inception to its appearance in print or online. He says we have to trust senior people to publish their own copy and, by extension, that means making sure that the people we hire are trustworthy. He is acknowledging that, for subs in particular, a lot of the work is drudgery and that is what he says he wants to remove. If reporters know that the words that appear under their byline are going to be their words and not a version checked and polished  by someone else, they might take more care over their stories and do their own name checks.

But Montgomery is going further than this. He wants to see a 20-fold increase in the material produced by his titles. That can  be achieved only with radical reorganisation, so this is where the 'harvesting of content' comes in. Essentially he is talking about crowd sourcing - getting the customers to produce the content for nothing and then selling it back to them. Smart business model, eh? There will still be journalists out in the field getting what we would consider 'real' news stories, but those in the office will be marshalling material that he expects to pour in from all quarters.

Steve Auckland, Local World's chief executive, explained to Press Gazette: 'What we want is a 20-fold increase in content on our sites. We can't do it by increasing the number of editorial staff, what we have to do is get lots more user-generated content. So our sports reporter will report on the game and provide analysis and comment, but there will be lots more content coming in from what the fans think about it. So journalists will be curating as well as supplementing that with their own comment.'

Another bit of digispeak there - curating. It's probably the most appropriate word in the new language if you think of an art gallery or museum working out how to present many different pieces so that the visitor can make sense of them.

Other groups are already on the same path. Jo Kelly, Trinity Mirror's regionals communities editor, explained  her strategy at the News Rewired digital journalism conference last month. And just to prove there's nothing new under the sun, it turns out to be  a reheat of the old bonny baby competition; think microwave rather than a covered plate on top of a steaming saucepan.

Readers are encouraged to submit themed photographs, such as snowmen or garden gnomes, to fill in forms nominating the best mum in the world or the most outstanding teacher, to contribute specialist columns, to indulge in a bit of nostalgia and to tweet or share their thoughts about the paper on Facebook.

Ms Kelly displayed examples of how such an approach had filled whole pages - indeed eight pages of pets dressed up as Father Christmas. It may well do, but whether this is quality 'content' that anyone beyond the people taking part would want to buy is a matter of opinion.  A more positive aspect was the development and involvement in local campaigns that mattered, such as one that invited mothers to send in pictures of their newborns as part of a fight to keep a baby unit open. But even that isn't new; local papers have always been at the centre of such issues.

Montgomery says he has been inspired by the recent revitalisation of Norway's local media and their sense of community. In an interview for InPublishing, he told Ray Snoddy that he had been dismayed that one of the dailies now owned by Local World did not seem to reflect the character of  the distinctive city it served.  'If you look at the Norwegian online sites you will be able to smell the salt air - the characteristic community is built around fishing tradition or farming or technology. You sense there is a community there and the old news agenda dictated by news editors the length and breadth of newspapers is not relevant any more.'

Fair enough. Lots of people are talking about the need to be hyper-local. The problem is, they don't seem to be putting that into practice, especially when papers are being swallowed up by groups that get ever bigger and farther removed from the communities they are serving. How this tallies with the hyper-local ideal is hard to see.

Newsquest, Johnston Press and others have introduced templated websites and newspaper designs. So much for individuality. In a way it's rather like our high streets (they all have M&S, New Look, Vodafone, Greggs, but you're served by someone with a different dialect depending on where you live), but of course  they are dying too.

Now Local World is treading the same path. A transformation team has been set up (yes, more jargon) and Auckland will be monitoring the activities of the papers on screens from London. The Derby Telegraph, Cambridge News and Exeter Express and Echo were in the vanguard of the operation and others have started moving to new websites. They are identical in appearance - though not, obviously, in content. It isn't encouraging. Particularly when there is an advertisement slap bang over the big picture that leads the site.

There's nothing wrong with asking readers to contribute to your output. Readers used to fill in wedding and obituary forms when I was a junior 40 years ago, the difference now seems to be that there will be no one to rewrite the amateur's efforts. Stringers would  file the village news, but again no one will have time to see if there are real stories buried in the WI raffle reports.

As for a sense of community, think who would be the first to dash to the laptop if a site were set up in Ambridge. Does Lynda Snell really represent that community? It is hard to get people involved these days. Guides, Scouts, village hall committees, parish councils, youth clubs and over-60s clubs are all  perpetually appealing for volunteers to help them keep going. The result is that it always seems to be the same people who run the show. There is a danger that an activist minority will end up with the loudest voice - and that may not result in a paper or website that people will want to read. I hope I'm wrong.

Independent web publishers are already getting in under the radar. The News Rewired conference heard from two entrepreneurs who were challenging local papers which they felt were not doing their job properly. Stuart Goulden, founder of One&Other in York, proudly told the session that he didn't employ journalists 'because we're storytellers'. I've no idea what he meant, but his formula is successful - if you measure success in financial terms. His website is attractive and easy to navigate. Pushing the news button brings up teasers for stories about a beer festival, a theatre usher who has worked at the same place for 40 years, and plans for a national cycle race in the city. The most recent appears to be from April 25.

Another speaker was James Fyrne, who runs the SoGlos site. This again is attractive and definitely focused on culture, offering guides to upcoming events, films, gigs and shows, as well as reviews of  hotels, restaurants and pubs. Fyrne does employ trained journalists, but not all the writing is brilliant. He has, however, fully grasped the importance of finding a niche and serving it.

What is sobering is that all this is happening in what should be a period of celebration for our traditional regional papers.

Last week was the Newspaper Society's Local Newspaper Week, with press freedom the central theme. It started with publication of a survey that concluded that about half of regional paper editors thought the Leveson inquiry had had a negative effect on their relationship with their readers. A number of papers ran features highlighting how they could give impetus to local campaigns or carried leaders on how they shouldn't be tarred with the phone-hacking brush. These are issues of huge importance to society as a whole, but whether they are likely to move the readers of the Basingstoke Gazette is another matter.

The Newspaper Society's website tells us that Britain has 1,100 local papers and 1,600 associated websites. About 300 editors are registered on the society's database and it was those editors who were invited to take part in the online survey. Thirty-seven replied.
The Local Newspaper Week page meanwhile trumpeted the 'high-profile' supporters of the week. There were four: Lorraine Kelly, Boris Johnson, Lord Hunt and Lord Judge. This hardly shouts credibility.

We know that regional proprietors are concerned about the cost if they are required to conform to the Leveson regime, but this was feeble propaganda that is unlikely to have done anyone any good.

  

Far more encouraging were the Regional Press Awards, which demonstrated that the campaigning spirit and creative flair still flourish. Let's hope that whatever the future holds for the local press, editors are able to continue to produce papers like these.


How do you see the future of journalism? Do you still have a paper delivered or pick one up at the station on the way to work? Do you prefer print, Kindle or iPad? Or have you given up on the mainstream media and switched to Twitter and blogs? Please join in the SubScribe survey here. Thank you.

@gameoldgirl

SubScribe

Out of print?

I love newspapers. My shareholders would like me to get rid of them all.

Rupert Murdoch, April 25, 2012

Who will win what could be a fight to the death? The people with newspapers in their very souls, or the investors whose interest in printed paper is restricted to the kind with watermarks and £ or $ signs?

Some publishers are already preparing to throw in the towel. The Guardian chief executive Andrew Miller said in so many words last year that the print edition’s days were numbered, that digital was the only future. This year he went further, embracing the prospect of giving “citizen journalists” a place in his company’s output. “Socialisation of media is at the heart of our future journalistic calling,” he said.

Will his customers stay loyal if they have to invest in a laptop or iPad before they can look at the paper? And will they pay for content - possibly produced by amateurs? A totally unscientific straw poll of one Guardian reader – my neighbour – came up with this response: “My first thought is no, I wouldn’t, because I like to have an actual paper to peruse anywhere I like – I am off to have a bath now with one, for example. However, if it goes digital then I’ll have no choice will I? Re payment, I would expect to pay.  But I rarely read anything on the web because it’s not as pleasant on screen.”

Circulations may be dwindling while web hits increase, but it is an uncomfortable fact for publishers that people like newspapers. Radio was supposed to kill them off. So was television. Then Ceefax and Oracle. Now the internet, the elephant in Leveson’s room.

In his evidence this week, Sky’s Adam Boulton said that the elephant was creating competitive pressures that were threatening the viability of the print media. Politicians, for example, were  no longer dependent on professional journalists to spread their message – they could now reach the entire public at the click of a mouse. So if basic news could be disseminated without the press as an intermediary, newspapers were left in a desperate search to find something different to offer their readers.

Politicians have an axe to grind.  It’s very nice for them to reach the public directly; but as battle-scarred as our profession may be, journalists are needed to question, analyse and call them to account. And in any case, how many people are going to click on what some junior minister has to say or follow her on Twitter? Turnout at elections doesn’t suggest a huge engagement with the political process and the MPs’ expenses scandal hasn’t exactly lifted their standing in people’s eyes.

The City University professor George Brock suggests that newspapers have to rethink the “bundle”mentality; deal with the idea that people may not want the whole package; accept that they can get their news from other sources and may not want to pay for features or commentary that doesn’t interest them.

I can see where he’s coming from, but I think – hope – that he’s wrong.  As an old-school  hack, it pains me to acknowledge that, other than on the really big occasions such as 9/11, news is not the selling point it once was. It is no longer the main course, but the hors d’oeuvres. The meat of a newspaper lies in its comment section. Features are the pudding and sport the cheese.

If people take their news from the TV and internet, where will they get their comment, features and sport? Magazines? There is evidence to support this theory: newspaper circulations are falling; current affairs magazines are prospering.  The Spectator, The Economist, The Week, The Oldie, Private Eye and Prospect are all putting on sales.  

The Spectator sells 63,000 copies a week; The Economist 210,000; The Week 180,000; The Oldie 41,000. Private Eye a record 228,000 a fortnight.  Prospect notches up 32,000 and the New Statesman, which doesn’t submit figures to ABC, about 24,000 a week. That’s a combined circulation of 778,000.

Hang on, though. Even in these dark days, nearly 10 million people in Britain buy a newspaper every day, including Sundays. That is something under half the number in 1950, but hardly a sign of terminal decline. We are in danger of becoming so beguiled by trends that we ignore the hard figures. There is still a solid market for print journalism. The big question is how to keep – and develop – it.

Trust and reliability

The first step is to recognise what a precious commodity we have and celebrate and promote it. All newspapers rely on building a relationship with their readers. As George Brock points out in his “bundles” blog, it’s a question of trust. As readers, we think we know where the paper is coming from. That doesn’t mean everyone writing for it has a Stepford brain; the opinion columns of our newspapers offer a range of opinion that you won’t find in the New Statesman or The Spectator.

And if we are to retain that trust, we must maintain the quality. But how can we do that when every news organisation is frantically cutting costs while trying to cover every base? Under that approach it  is inevitable that quality must suffer.

This was highlighted seven years ago by the Sheffield University lecturer Adrian Bingham. His prescient paper for the History & Policy academic group on the future of the popular press pointed to the “tendency to prize speed and short-term impact over accuracy and reliability”. The main thrust of his work was to consider the behaviour of the press and the influence historically exercised by proprietors. This was in 2005, before the News of the World published the Clive Goodman story about Prince William's knee injury that set the whole phone-hacking ball rolling. Bingham concluded  that "experience suggests that the press is unlikely to engage in a searching self-examination without some external prompting”. Well it certainly has that now.

The Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh tweets constantly from the Leveson hearings, and very entertaining he is, too. Then he has to write a straight news story for the web and the newspaper, plus bits of analysis and colour. It’s madness. How long can you keep up that sort of pace?

Reporters have to fulfil so many roles and cover so many stories that they spend their working days on the end of a telephone. They don’t have the time to go out and meet contacts, build stories, follow hunches. Subs are increasingly regarded as surplus to requirements. Across Fleet Street their numbers are being reduced, yet they are expected to push out copy for print, web, mobiles and tablets.  You have reporters bashing out stories and tweeting like billyo and subs scrambling against a dozen deadlines. No one is allowed to specialise in any field in which they have a real aptitude. Everyone must function in every sphere.

The result? A multi-platform modern media for the digital age? No. We’re giving - or rather selling - our readers  half-researched stories and rehashed handouts with literals in headlines, misspellings, bad grammar, wrong pictures and captions that say ‘xxxxx  cccc here please’.

And so people lose faith in papers and stop buying them - and the decline of print journalism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Newspapers are so intent on promoting their digital content that they are neglecting their reader-friendly traditional format, a format that has served for three centuries.  The blogger Fleetstreetfox has a huge online readership, but she wanted a newspaper column. Why? To make more money? To gain a wider audience? To have a “proper” platform for her views? All three, she admits. She now has a weekly spot on the Mirror’s website, but still she yearns to appear in the print edition.

Why?  Because newspapers  are special.

It feels good

For a start, they are tactile.  You can’t curl up with a laptop in the same way, tear out a bit to show a friend or, like my neighbour, take it into the bath. Typing in crossword answers or numbers in a Sudoku grid isn't the same as writing them on to a paper version. Readers notice the different qualities of newsprint, the feel of the supplements.

A printed newspaper has a special geography and rhythm – and don’t the readers howl when it changes. It helps the reader along. There is a hierarchy. Yes, of course the splash is the most important story, but as you move inside, the sequence of pages, the positioning of stories on spreads, the sidebars, the factboxes, the pictures, the witty bottom nibs, and, most of all, the typography all indicate what the editors think are the most important, interesting, intriguing aspects of the day's events.

You don’t get that on the web or iPad. Online you’ll find a main story and a series of puffs and links, but little to indicate which the editors regard as the most relevant or important. There is a constant pressure to update the lead, but it’s hard for the reader to find the story that would make page 7 or 17 in the paper. On the iPad, you may see the same stories as in the print edition, but all the headlines are the same size, every news page is alike. The other day The Times carried  a huge file picture of Adele with an armful of Grammies and a small story saying that her 21 album had outsold Michael Jackson’s Thriller. In the paper that would have been a nib, possibly with a picture. But on the iPad it had the same presence as a serious political story. Can that be right?

Newspapers don’t have to die; they have to rethink themselves. Dumbing down was the solution of the 1990s. Today we should be wising up.

Get the mix right

News pages should be more incisive, with more background, analysis and commentary (clearly marked as such) on the main subjects of the day, but also with cross-fertilisation with the web, guiding readers to relevant material published in other media. At the same time, the secondary stories, the quirky and offbeat must be protected. Readers can stomach only so much war, economics and politics; it's the "everyday" stories that don't mean much in themselves but are simply interesting that newspapers do better than any other medium -  the stories that don't make it to television or radio bulletins and probably don't get read on the web or iPhone. Court cases are definitely in this category - think of the old-style Telegraph page 3. 
Features should be original and home-researched, rather than based on whatever book, television programme, film or album is coming out next week. How many interviews with Chris Martin or Daniel Craig does one country need? But originality costs money.

Look after your regulars

Next, we need to accept that the journalists who put a paper together are not representative of the country as a whole. They need to take a wider view. Britain isn’t a nation of yummy mummies, hoodies and grasping immigrants. We have a diverse population, yet our papers don’t reflect it. They are written by thirty and fortysomethings for thirty and fortysomethings and the rest of the world can go hang. If you think I’m exaggerating, look at the preview coverage for the latest series of Mad Men, a television programme that attracts an audience of fewer than 50,000.

The received wisdom has always been that young readers are key. The philosophy, rather like that of the banks, has been “catch them young and they’ll be yours for life”. The logic now is that the young can’t be bothered to buy papers, but are digital savvy with their smartphones, Twitter etc, so those are the formats that count. But they still buy celeb mags, don't they?

Are we missing a trick by chasing only the young? We have an ageing population: generations that have spent their lives getting their news, puzzles, football reports and recipes in print. Pensioners will soon account for a third of the population.  Do they want to read the newspaper on a computer or phone? That’s a heck of a lot people to write off.

Quite a lot of Britain isn't London
Then there is Londonitis.  The UK has a population of about 62 million, of whom about 8 million live in Greater London. Yet the serious papers virtually ignore the 54 million in what they dismiss as the regions or the provinces. They lump together Manchester, Birmingham and York as though they were a single entity, treat Devizes and Hertford as though they had the same concerns and interests. Who (apart from the Telegraph) cares about people living in the countryside? This is a whole untapped source of readership, but it will become more and more neglected as editorial cuts bite.

In the 1980s, The Times style was actually to byline reporters who worked outside London with a “from” dateline as though they were in Outer Mongolia : From Craig Seton in Stafford; From Richard Ford in Belfast. Thank goodness that has at least stopped; and how delicious it is that the paper’s most talented investigative reporter, Andrew Norfolk, operates not in the capital but ooop North.

Don't overcharge

Price is another issue.  Royal Mail struggles to convince the public that collecting a letter posted in Hastings at 5.30pm and delivering it in Aberdeen the next morning is exceptional value for 70p. What hope, then, is there of persuading readers to part with £1.20 for a 28-page Monday broadsheet with pictures of Kate Middleton and cute wildlife,  a lot of eurogloom and some football? OK, so maybe they buy. But will they do so tomorrow, and the next day? A tenner a week for a daily paper plus bumper weekend editions is quite a chunk out of a stretched household budget, especially if the business or sport or travel supplements are routinely thrown away unread. It doesn't feel like value (even though, of course, it is). 
The Times price war under Peter Stothard in the 90s laid the myths that AB readers were not price-sensitive and that to reduce the price cheapened the brand. The paper's circulation flourished as it never had before or since. Today The i is doing quite nicely, thank you, at 20p.

Get rid of the ugly ads

We are told that the economics don't work for print. Newsprint is expensive, falling circulations hit advertising, which is already suffering because of the state of the general economy. That's all true, but what is missing is the will to succeed. Newspaper owners see digital as the new nirvana and  print as something that they have to put up with - for now. The pride in print has all but gone. Just look at the hideous adverts of all shapes and sizes. Ads used to be confined to the corners or across the bottom of pages; now they can sit in the middle, diagonally across spreads and even occupy the top half of the page rather than the bottom. Then there are the pages cut in half vertically and the wrap-arounds that hide the real front page. They all make it so much harder for the reader to find the editorial.  No one seems immune: advertisers  have got the papers on the ground like a lion with a wounded  zebra, and they're gorging themselves.

Learn from the Sage of Omaha

There’s no escaping that papers are losing money. The Guardian group is haemorrhaging £40m a year; it has cut 250 jobs and is heading down the digital highway.  Sly Bailey has paid the price for the decline of the Mirror group. The Times has lost money for as long as anyone can remember, but suddenly it is expected to become viable and stand alone. Times and Sunday Times losses have been cut from nearly £90m in 2009 to £45m in 2010 to less than £12m last year.  Why, after all these years, is there this imperative for them to pay their way?

Because of the shareholders.  As Murdoch pointed out in his comment to the Leveson inquiry at the top of this post, News Corp investors, mostly in America, are sick of the nonsense of the newspaper industry and particularly the hacking scandal. They are happy to take the benefits afforded by the TV networks, film studios, blockbusters and satellite and cable, but they are not willing to carry passengers, particularly passengers from another country.  It’s too easy to forget that this giant multinational was built on print. 
These newspaper-hating investors may care to note that none other than Warren Buffett has today signed a deal to buy 63 American papers and he's not a man renowned for backing lost causes. These are, however, local papers and he reiterated his view today that "In towns and cities where there is a strong sense of community, there is no more important institution than the local paper". (See also Why local newspapers matter.)

Please can we have a press baron?

Cost-cutting is not the answer. Throwing everything into digital is not the answer. News organisations need imagination and investment. They need to build on what they know best rather than to throw away decades of experience. Of course they must embrace the new media, but there is still a place for print and to abandon it will prove a huge mistake.

Look at the past and you will see a legion of giant beasts of the newspaper world: Hearst, Rothermere, Beaverbrook, Northcliffe, Murdoch, Maxwell. Maybe not people you would want as house guests, but men with vision and passion. Maybe, like football, newspapers need to find a new breed rich men looking for a plaything. The old press barons were as much or more interested in power and influence than in profit. That is off limits for now, so unless you have zillions to squander, it’s the bottom line that counts.

So it comes down to the Desmonds and the oligarchs? Not necessarily. Editors could reassess the packages they produce, look to new readerships, and put forward new strategies.
The survival of print journalism lies in the hands of the journalists.

How do you see the future of journalism? Do you still have a paper delivered or pick one up at the station on the way to work? Do you prefer print, Kindle or iPad? Or have you given up on the mainstream media and switched to Twitter and blogs? Please join in the SubScribe survey here. Thank you.

@gameoldgirl

SubScribe

Why local newspapers matter

When was the last time you - or anyone you know - stood at the gates of a cemetery collecting names of mourners as they left a funeral?
When did you last attend a parish council meeting or magistrates' court? Or call into a local police station for a chat (rather than to hand in your drivers' documents) or check the upcoming weddings at the register office? 
Do you still look at the postcards in newsagents' windows and check the village notice board?
Indeed, have you the faintest idea of what I'm on about?
For generations of journalists, being soaked through or bored throughout were the price to be paid to learn their craft.  The lessons were given not by university lecturers, but by wiser older hands (sometimes as old as 23) who knew all about the fetes worse than death, that brides were more likely to carry a bouquet of  freesias than fuchsias, that rain never dampened the enthusiasm for anything and that the lady mayoress was frequently to be seen sharing a joke.  The biggest lesson of all was that faces and names sold papers - and that those names must always be spelt correctly.

Forty years ago a weekly newspaper serving a medium-sized market town could expect to have a circulation of between ten and fifteen thousand. It would be staffed by an editor, a news editor, a chief reporter, half a dozen reporters, a sports editor, a couple of photographers and three or four subs. There might also be a feature writer, often an older woman working part-time.
Nearly all of the reporters would likely be juniors - indentured trainees who would serve three years before taking their proficiency test. Some would stick to news reporting, others would find a niche in sport or features or even subbing. Some in bigger newspaper groups would move around during their indenture period so that they would taste life on a daily early in their training. Most would seek to move on once they had that proficiency certificate in their hands. The fundamental skills they had learnt would be expected everywhere; all the ads used the same phraseology: reporters had to have a talent for finding off-diary stories; subs must always be fast and accurate. 
The young journalists would move from weeklies to evenings to bigger evenings. Some would choose the executive route and find their place in the community as the editor of the local paper; for others Fleet Street was the dream. The ambitions were equally honourable - if not equally remunerated - and the result was that Britain had a thriving newspaper industry populated by well-trained journalists. (I am talking here about journalism, not about printers, electricians etc and the Mickey Mouse nonsense of the era.)
For those happy to stay in what were then known as the provinces, there were plenty of jobs and opportunities. 
You may like to sit down before you read the next par.

In 1970, the Birmingham Evening Mail had a circulation of 400,000 and employed 113 journalists: 30 newsdesk and reporters, 25 district reporters, 23 news subs, 15 features staff, 20 sports staff and 9 photographers.
There are national newspapers today that struggle to match that level of staffing.

Then came the freesheets and the landscape changed. 
People are fickle: readers cancelled their orders for the paid-for weeklies and the freebies flourished. Village stringers were as happy to send their snippets to the newcomers as to the old rags - and sometimes preferred to, since the freesheets' smaller staffs (often ad reps doubling up to perform editorial tasks) wouldn't  have the time or inclination to rewrite them. As time went by, readers became convinced they were getting something almost as good as they'd always had - and for nothing.
The local press struggled; advertising ratios grew, so that the papers became almost as ugly as the upstart rivals; costs had to be cut. Newspapers which had been run by local businessmen for reasons of altruism or influence were sold into groups that got bigger and bigger. Some paid-fors took the 'if you can't beat them' approach and went free.
The freesheet didn't kill the local rag. It survived to fight another day. But only just. The decline has been relentless, but the smallest thing can still shock. This morning it was not so much the Johnston Press horror, but the announcement  of the shortlist for this year's regional press awards that made me sit upright. There among the nominees is The Birmingham Post, once one of the country's most respected morning papers. And the category? Best weekly newspaper with a circulation of less than 20,000. (It's sister, the Mail with the monster staff and a circulation to match, now sells a tenth of the copies it did four decades ago - and "sells" is a generous term, since many are given away.)

Today  the local press is facing its greatest  fight - but with a much depleted army - and this time everyone is adopting the 'if you can't beat them' line. The combination of a series of recessions and the rise of the internet is a formidable enemy for the local press to confront and few would bet on it emerging triumphant.
The consolidation of small newspaper operations into bigger businesses with shareholders to answer to has removed all romance and sentimentality.The clank of the linotype, the smell of the ink, the thunder of the presses have long since been removed from most offices as pages are sent electronically to printing contractors hundreds of miles away.  With profits and circulations falling and debts rising, journalists are under ever greater pressure to work harder and longer. Jobs are being combined (for heaven's sake, even editors are being done away with) and editions cut.
The Bristol Evening Post is abandoning its Saturday paper. Johnston Press is turning dailies into weeklies and has sent the Editor in Chief of the Scotsman on enforced leave while it decides what to do about him, having abolished his job.
And all the time we are being offered assurances that readers will get the same local coverage across a range of platforms or formats or whichever digital buzzword is in vogue today.
Well, you have to admit that Johnstons have to do something. The Doncaster Star is an evening paper that sells 2,500 copies a night. Yes, 2,500. How can you run an evening paper with such a circulation?
There are big names in the Johnston stable, but all are scoring at a fraction of the rate they enjoyed in their prime. The Sheffield Star sold more than 200,000 in 1970, today its circulation is around 37,000; the Yorkshire Evening Post sold 250,000, today that is down to 35,000. The Halifax Courier, which has been told it is turning into a weekly, is down from 43,000  to barely 15,000.

Ashley Highfield, above,  Johnston's newish chief executive, today spelt out his vision for his local newspaper stable. And what is it?  To emulate mumsnet. 
Or as he put it, to create "themed digital destinations". Material on similar topics - gardening, football, events, small business news - will be "aggregated and enhanced with social media to create a compelling destination for people interested in that particular niche...websites like mumsnet have exploited this brilliantly and we can too. So our plan is to create several of these new businesses and then promote them on a national basis".
Excuse me? This is the future of your local newspapers? To turn them into online versions of Gardening Weekly or Football World? On a national basis? Have you not noticed that there are quite a lot of specialist publications and websites out there? With experts writing them rather than shoestring staffs. Why should anyone turn to the Halifax Courier online edition for gardening tips?
Another part of the strategy is to raise the price of the print editions. "Have you ever wondered why,"  Mr Highfield asks, "we charge 65p for a paper in one part of the country and £1 for a similar product elsewhere. There are many cases where we simply undercharge. Our experience is that price increases do not have an adverse impact on circulation. Consumers will pay up to 95p for a well-produced weekly product."
Right, so when Rupert Murdoch started his price wars, he got it all wrong did he? He could have raised the price and seen circulations remain the same?
Or if Mr Murdoch's experience doesn't convince him, Mr Highfield might care to look at his own group. A while back, the Yorkshire Post raised its price from £1 to £1.10, scrapped district editions and cut the newsagents' margins. The circulation fell. A survey of 1,400 people for the National Federation of Retail Newsagents said that 59 per cent of respondents were put off by price rises and 60 per cent said they were buying fewer paid-for papers than they were last year because of the cost.
And then there is that caveat in Mr Highfield's remarks: people are willing to pay "for a well-produced weekly product". If local offices are being closed (Todmorden, Hebden Bridge and Bridgnorth are all for the chop) and staff being cut, how well-produced will these papers be? 
In his 1971 book Provincial Press and the Community, Ian Jackson of Salford University noted that the Cambridge Evening News left routine local news to its weekly sister and found that it assisted sales. "In towns where the weekly is largely a reworking of the previous week's local news as reported in the evening press, sales are often unimpressive," he wrote. The same must surely apply to regurgitating web content once a week.

The whole industry is being squeezed; morale is low across the board. But there are still organisations that want to produce truly local papers for their communities - and even in these tough times, some are seeing benefits that buck the trend.
***Last autumn only three regional newspapers saw their circulations increase and two of them were sisters: Norwich's Eastern Daily Press and  Evening News. In an interview with UK Press Gazette, Don Williamson, the papers' circulation chief, talked about home distribution and other matters that you would expect to concern a man in his position, but he also showed understanding of the editorial ethos. "We want to establish a bigger network of local correspondents and get readers and newsagents to have an affinity and love for the paper and a sense of ownership of everything we do."
Apart from the staff at the Norwich headquarters, including specialists in local government, health, education and crime, the papers maintain eight district offices and a London-based political editor. The editor EDP Peter Waters told Press Gazette  that he made it a principle to avoid shock, horror journalism. 
"We are still very conscious of providing a comprehensive local news package as well as national and international news, sport and business, We should do everything a national can do, with local news as our USP. 
"We want people to feel upbeat about where they live and they made the right decision to live in Norfolk. We are militantly pro-Norfolk. We run campaigns for people to shop here and holiday here. The papers belong to Norfolk.”

Tindle Newspapers are beating the same drum. The company founded and still run by Sir Ray Tindle at 82 operates under the motto "local papers at the heart of the community". The group has more than 200 titles and managing director Brian Doel says: "I am sure we could have saved money across the group, but we've kept each title very local with local editions and subs and reporters as much as possible. they know most about the community they serve."

Now Sir Ray is no latter day saint and people who work for the EDP or the Tindle papers may not feel life is quite as wonderful as their bosses paint; both groups have made cuts and consolidations. But the core function - to produce local papers - remains intact. The shot of the Tindle papers above show how each has retained its identity; they certainly can't be accused of homogeneity. Some are paid-for, some are freesheets. If you look at an edition online you turn the pages, just like a normal paper. For some you are asked to pay 35p or 40p, others are free.

Compare this with Newsquest, which now owns the clutch of papers that  made up Essex County Newspapers plus the Basildon and Southend-based stable that was once part of Westminster Press. The ECN group had its headquarters in Colchester, above, where the  Evening Gazette and weekly Essex County Standard were based. There were also district editorial offices for weekly papers in Harwich, Clacton, Maldon, Chelmsford and Halstead. All were  printed in Colchester. Today the weekly operations have been merged, the Gazette is still produced - but without an editor - and, to be fair, it has done well to hang on to a circulation around half the 30,000 it managed at its peak. Martin McNeill, who trained with the group in the 70s, is now the editorial director, overseeing the production of the Gazette and the Southend Evening Echo from the group's offices in Basildon. 

Let's just run through that again: a daily newspaper with no editor being run from an office more than 50 miles away.

Like everyone else, Newsquest is hoping to capture new readers through its digital output. The lead story on the Gazette's website at lunchtime today was

Mum's heart stops four times and she suffers stroke having twins

There was a photograph of the woman concerned with two children aged, at a guess, between nine and twelve months old. So this is hardly new news. The picture came with three pars of copy telling us about the heart stopping and the hospital's two-hour battle to save her life. The site then guides us to "Special report in today's Gazette". So that's it, that's all you'll learn unless you buy the paper.

Well, it's a strategy of sorts.

Clicking on the 'most read' list at the side, I bring up a story called

Slimmers urged to use new programme

It tells us that the Anglian Community Enterprise is setting up one-to-one classes to advise people on a weight loss programme that has helped 600 people to lose 200 stone over the past year. (That, as a reader points out, is an average of four and a half pounds each).  It doesn't tell us what Anglian Community Enterprise is (it's part of the NHS) or that the sessions are free - as are two other programmes that aren't mentioned in the story, which has no byline.

There is a Tesco ad embedded in the the copy; in the centre of the page there is a glittering mirrorball with roller skaters passing by; at the side there are six ads between the various links to other stories, and there are a further four on top of the Gazette masthead. Every one of the ads  is moving. It is almost impossible to read anything without being distracted by a flashing word or image. There are only four local stories on the page, but there are links to national news and features.

The Yorkshire Press, which sold 60,000 a night even with the mighty Evening Post as a rival in the Seventies, is also now owned by Newsquest. Its website looks exactly the same with similar national links, although obviously with different local stories.

Is this the way we want our local news? Will these templated websites with their dancing ads  attract or deter readers?

Local newspapers matter.  Royal Mail is not allowed to give up deliveries to homes just because they are difficult to reach; bus companies are not allowed to abandon rural services and cream off the lucrative urban routes; broadcasters are required to maintain levels of local coverage in return for their licences.

I'm not suggesting that  newspaper businesses should be regulated in the same way - you cannot force a private enterprise to provide a potentially loss-making service - but I am saying that those rules for the mail, the buses and the TV stations are there because local communities matter. It is important that people are able to keep in touch and feel part of the area where they live, to be able to reach friends and neighbours in person or through letters, papers, phone calls and, yes, online social networks. 

To produce a decent local newspaper, the reporters need to have proper contact with their readers and the community leaders. They need to go to those boring council meetings, not just to take notes, but to chat to people afterwards, to get the stories behind the stories. They need to maintain contact with the local police, the village shopkeeper. They need to be in court for all cases, not simply when they've been tipped off that there's an important or juicy one coming up. And if they don't build their contacts they won't even get the tips for those. 

We had to fight in the 1970s for the right to remain in council chambers to hear all the discussions. Councils used to be allowed to vote to go into camera and exclude the press without explanation. As a young reporter I had to stand and challenge such a vote when the law  changed, to seek an explanation for why what they were about to discuss was not fit for public consumption. The new rules were effective; government became more open. 

And now we can't even be bothered to turn up. Or rather we can't afford the time to turn up. If you've got to write up the Basildon charity fun run, the A12 car crash, the Maldon regatta and the Colchester factory strike, you've barely got time to ring the Stebbing parish clerk about last night's meeting, let alone consider attending in person.

So more and more stories are covered on the phone - but the contacts who tell us what happened are the people with the vested interest in seeing the story slanted in a particular way.  Justice and democracy at their basic levels are not seen in action. 

Local newspapers have always been produced largely by youngsters with aspirations. Those village calls have always been a chore, the staid writing style constraining. But this is about providing a service, about learning to deal with people, about being grounded and disciplined. If local papers become digital wannabe redtops with slang headings and endless celebs, there will be no use for them. And that matters. 

It matters because millions of people will be denied basic information about their communities. And it matters because this slapdash approach will drag down the national press. If local papers do not produce decent ethical journalists with basic skills, who will? National papers have set up their own graduate training schemes, but these are open to only a relative handful of the smartest young men and women. 

There are 50 applicants for every graduate post  - and the universities are turning out more media graduates than there are journalists employed across the entire industry. That means there's an army of young people with certificates saying they know what they're doing. But how can they find out for real? Everyone can learn a certain amount from the classroom, but there is still no substitute for what used to be called on-the-job training and where are these youngsters going to get that? 
How will they learn how to interview a woman whose five-year-old son has just died in the village pond? Will they understand the importance of shining a light on what's going on in the Mayor's Parlour? 
They need to know.
One day they may be interviewing the woman whose son has just been killed in a terrorist bombing in a shopping centre. Or looking into shady dealings in Downing Street that could bring down a Government.

***Important update: Don Williamson was sacked a week before he was due to retire in August 2012. He admitted falsifying the circulation figures for the Evening News and Eastern Daily Press. The figures were reaudted in October and showed that News sales had fallen by 6.2% and the EDP's by 6.5%.

Thank you for sticking with it to the end. Please do share your thoughts below. And please take a look at the other posts. They are all media related.

Sold down the river the Beeb's flotilla and fireworks fiasco - and a feeble fightback. Why didn't the top man have his hand on the tiller?

Hello and goodbye to Wapping a personal diary of life inside the fortress in the days before the strike that changed newspapers forever

Out of print a love letter to newspapers in this digital age. Why they don't have to die if we have the will to let them live and thrive

Missing: an opportunity How the hunt for Madeleine McCann could be turned into a force for good instead of just a festival of mawkish sentimentality

Riding for a fall Does buying a ticket for a jolly day out at the races mean you are fair game for the snobs who sneer and snipe?

Just a pretty face Illustrating the business pages isn't the easiest job in the world, but spare us the celebs who aren't even mentioned in the story

Food for thought a case study in why we should take health advice with a pinch of salt (and a glass of red wine and a helping of roast beef) 

The world's gone mad Don Draper returns and  the drooling thirtysomethings go into overdrive But does anybody watch the show? (But there is more Whipple in this post!)