It's all too easy to sneer at the local press, with preconceptions of parochial stories of village fetes, speed bumps and planning disputes, particularly if you're a member of the London-based media buying community to whom local papers are largely irrelevant to their personal lives. Unfortunately, and despite the best efforts of the Newspaper Society, it's difficult to make the regional press sexy or cool.
And I have to admit that I was probably guilty of this too - although the Berkhamsted and Tring Gazette is a good read - until I was invited to judge some awards for the Newspaper Society's Advertising and Digital Awards.
Amid all the gloom stories of how the regional press is a bushed flush with Trinity Mirror cutting staff and warning of a severe downturn in ad revenue while Newsquest reporting a 24% drop in profits, I was really surprised and genuinely impressed to see just how dynamic and vibrant the regional press actually is and how far it has come in embracing digital media in a way that has avoided merely bandwagon jumping and added real value to both its readership and advertisers. In fact, some of the content was far better than that found on their national press rivals.
For this, a sector which is viewed with some snootiness, deserves credit and re-evaluation - it's doing its best to prove that there is life in it yet.
