IT is a bleak time for journalism with job losses and redundancies biting at daily and regional papers across Britain.
With profits down at Johnston Press, the company is looking to shake up its management on newsdesks upwards making painful job losses. The same is true at GMG where the Reading paper is going bi-weekly and there are set to be horrific losses at the MEN and its weeklies.
Soon, we could get to the stage where there are simply no local papers left or all that remains is news run on tight budgets by few people with no resources. The result - a poor product which people will not buy anyway making the situation worse.
The internet has flourished with blogging, Twitter and all the rest. It has been good for papers to embrace this but the problem is - it doesn't make anywhere near the same money that traditional newspapers did (note the word 'did'). This is made worse by an active online community of untrained journalists blogging away rivalling the sources where people once went for their news.
And I must admit, today, I too read blogs instead of going to newspaper websites because the content is often more interesting, free from the constraints of owners or editors and can be exclusive.
With papers going out of business as I write, there will be few quality reads left alongside a growing amount of blogs and tweets or whatever attracting the reader.
My only worry is the lack of journalism training tied to those writing them and the resources they have to gain access to the movers and shakers. The authors also often have little concept of libel so risk being sued.
I think it is time for the Government to look at the issue of the decline of newspapers and the media - especially as it is supposed to be a key part of democracy.
In the meantime, as a trained journalist, I'll hedge my bets by blogging, writing for a newspaper and tweeting (or whatever else I can do right now to get people's attention!).
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