Forum Topic

Local Paper unfair criticism

The front page is clearly an advert and paranoid to think otherwise. The Gazette has done well to survive the death of newsprint as many local papers throughout the UK have closed due to the internet and new media. We once had 3 papers Ealing,Acton and Southall gazettes with their own reporters who covered local meetings and were a great source of info.with a wealth of news.Worth going into Central Library to look at back copies to see how good those papers were. The Gazette is no biased but clearly has limited resources for local reporting. For biased reporting you need to look at the Daily Mail and Evening Standard. We should be grateful for having the Gazette even in its current form as few other locals have survived.

Glen Barnham ● 3651d4 Comments

That political bias is a result of economic necessity doesn't mean it shouldn't be called out.And, laudable as your attempts are to get local businesses to support local media, they are not going to spend precious resources on advertising that doesn't work and they don't have a responsibility to subsidise businesses that the owners don't make a sufficient investment in.Your comments are timely though. The fall in the share price of Trinity Mirror seems to have been a result of concerns about their investment in New Day which they are closing tomorrow.

Paul Cavanagh ● 3646d

Trinity Mirror's share price has taken a bit of a hammering recently and there is probably more bad news to come on the phone hacking scandal. What this means is that more investment in the local paper is unlikely so a return to the kind of coverage we had in the past is unlikely. A good local paper remains important for democracy in the area and a financial stable one would be able to exercise more independence. Therefore business who support the paper are helping support a vital social asset as well as their own bottom line and I try and make a point using their services and telling them if I see their ads in the Gazette (or indeed on this site). We are kidding ourselves if we think social media will suffice to keep us properly informed about what is going on in our area. An independent authoritative voice is critical and we won't realise how much so until we lose it.

Andy Jones ● 3646d

It isn't clearly an advert. If you look carefully there are the words 'advertisement feature' in a small font towards the bottom but without close scrutiny it looks like an endorsement.I don't dispute that the newspaper industry is under intense commercial pressure. An over dependence on political advertising is one more symptom of this broader problem.

Paul Cavanagh ● 3650d

Entirely agree.

Andy Jones ● 3651d