'The death of the local press', Journalism Education, Vol 4 (1) 2015

This paper takes a clinical look at the current state of one of Britain’s most treasured
artefacts – the local printed newspaper – and points the way towards the likely
future. The evidence is overwhelming: rapidly declining sales and radical cost-cutting exercises indicate the daily local printed newspaper will soon be dead. The traditional audience is also literally dying – and to most of our young people, the idea of getting news twelve hours after it has happened in a form which dirties your hands and involves felling half a forest, looks as quaint as relying on a carrier pigeon for the latest football scores. Not only that, but there has been a failure to both prepare and then adapt to the new media landscape.