Regional newspapers are closing down in their hundreds, but it’s not just jobs being lost – communities are starting to wither
One of the sounds fast disappearing from
British homes in the past 15 years has been that of a fat local newspaper falling on to a doormat. That daily or weekly alert to the goings-on in the courts and councils and schools and streets a walk or a bus ride from where we live is no longer an anticipated feature of a majority of lives. From 2005 to the end of 2018, there was a net loss of 245 local news titles. An estimated 58% of the country is now served by no regional newspaper. Last week, Mark Thompson, former director general of the
BBC and current chief executive of the
New York Times, suggested in a keynote lecture that the closures would only increase without a dramatic shift in policy and investment, and that “A society which fails to provide its different communities and groups with the means to listen and come to understand each other’s pasts and presents shouldn’t be surprised if mutual incomprehension and division are the consequence. If you doubt that any of this connects to real-world politics and national wellbeing, you need to pay more attention.”
On a national level the relative decline in print journalism has been partly compensated by the shift online and a blizzard of information from other media; locally, that is not the case. Many of us are increasingly likely to hear more news of the Twitter-trending lives of Piers Morgan or
Kim Kardashian than the people with whom we share our own town. The effect of that shift is arguably every bit as damaging to community as the decline in footfall on the high street. A local newspaper, at its best, reflects the place in which you live in all its minute complexity – its celebrations and its commiserations and its incarcerations; it not only holds powerful local figures to account, it shapes shared feelings of hope and of anger and helps to piece together the serial story of where you are.