What the local papers aren't telling you...

It used to be said of newspapers that they were black and white and read all over.

Today our local papers are black and blue from being beaten up by deserting readers and hardly read at all.

The latest circulation figures for the first half of this year make depressing reading for those who believe local papers are an essential part of local democracy.

The area’s two biggest selling papers – the High-Wycombe based Bucks Free Press and the Maidenhead Advertiser – both fell below the psychologically important 20,000 circulation mark. They’ve dropped 6.6per cent and 5.3 per cent respectively compared with the first six months of 2009.

The Bucks Herald, based in Aylesbury, took the biggest knock of all losing nine per cent in sales to reach a weekly circulation of 13,823; while the Buckinghamshire Advertiser and Examiner titles, based mainly around Amersham and Chesham, fell 8.4 per cent to a circulation of 11,558.

The papers are recording their lowest circulation figures in living memory, and clearly if the falls continue in the way they have in the last decade, they are not sustainable.

It’s not all gloom for the shareholders: advertising is recovering as are profits, and the numbers of people visiting the paper’s websites are soaring. Whether those people will willingly pay a subscription to view local newspaper websites remains highly debateable however.

The real concern is over the future of local journalism. The papers are employing fewer journalists, and those that remain hardly ever get out of the office to do any real reporting and investigating. The stresses and the strains are showing: some stories are ill-researched and unbalanced. The columns on-line and in print are relying more on anonymous commentators and eager locals providing gossip and chitchat for free.

Optimists believe that in the end people will pay a higher price, online and on paper, for quality journalism. This is precisely the gamble News International is taking in charging for the Times and Sunday Times websites. Time will tell if they are right. In the meantime, the local papers will grimly hang on and hope that something turns up.