Support your local Newspaper

I stop buying my local newspaper a good few years ago for no real reason other than I was reading it for free on the internet, so why pay.

However, I have recently started buying the South Wales Echo again. I realised I wasn’t reading it online just cherry picking what interested me missing out on lots of other local news. The localness of such papers is important so is having a full staff of journalist because who will cover the council meeting or look into fly tipping and other issues.

I remember when there would be a mountain of South Wales Echo’s stacked up ready to sell and there would be two deliveries a day, the early edition, and the late. Then it was an afternoon paper now there is just the one delivery first thing in the morning and compered to yesteryear sales they are down and validated by the meagre number of copies of paper on sale today.

Speaking to the shopkeeper, he said he was down three quarters on paper sales not just the South Wales Echo and put it down to the internet. Now he would rather sell out than order more because he can’t be sure he could sell any extra. Newspapers have fallen on hard times. Advertising revenue and circulation have long been in decline and there are plenty of pundits proclaiming the death of the local and even the national newspapers.

People call for more local news but where will they get their news from unless in local print. You are not going to find news about Cardiff in the national London press for sure, social media then, I thing not nor blogs. The national paper of Wales, ‘The Western Mail’ I can’t remember the last time I bought it but do remember it was a boring read. Maybe it is time to check it out as well. Who knows I could be missing something. The local Echo on the other hand is local as local gets and I am glad I decided to start buying it again.

Has a sports fan and in particular a football supporter there is nowhere else I could read about Cardiff City daily. I find it hard to believe other fans are constantly calling for boycotts over this story or that.