The British Local Newspaper Has Died A Quiet Death

The British high street has seen many changes over the years. Many of them shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Let’s imagine the high street as a soap opera, one that has trundled on for decades upon decades. We all readily accept that its cast would have to change and adapt in that time. Some characters were fan favourites whose time was cruelly cut short: Woolworths in 2009. Some lasted much longer than they ought to have: Blockbuster in 2013. Some launched bizarre and goofy spinoffs: WHSmith rebranding as TGJones in 2025.

But, away from the bright lights, there have been some more fundamental changes that we could easily miss. Over the years, the writers of these soap operas, the people who record and curate the high streets and the little communities that they bring together, have been falling in number up and down the country. Perhaps through retirement or a desire to change career in some cases, but most often because they realise that they are relics of a bygone era. The idea of every town, or borough, or local area, having their own weekly publication now seems a nostalgic flicker, a reverie of time past.

Why should we care?

The numbers make for stark reading. According to the Charitable Journalism Project, a pressure group founded in 2019 by a consortium of academics, journalists, lawyers and media professionals to support local and public interest journalism, there was a net loss of 265 newspaper titles in Britain between 2005 and 2020. In 2022, the CJP gave evidence of this decline to an inquiry by the House of Commons Digital, Culture and Sport Select Committee. One statistic mentioned in their argument is particularly eye-catching. The UK likely now has fewer local newspapers than at any time since the 18^th century, when at least 40% of the population was illiterate.

And yet, numbers only tell part of this story. The decline of local journalism clearly presents a host of thorny issues for the country, and many in the national press have come out to argue for the importance of preserving it.

In February 2024, Press Gazette published research which revealed that the regional media sector in the UK in 2022 was about a quarter of the size that it was in 2007 and had sustained significant job losses due to major falls in advertising revenue. Around the same time, The Guardian made the point that a significantly reduced local journalism industry would inevitably lead to weaker scrutiny for local government, as national news media would be unable to cover all stories, possibly opening the door for corruption. A year later, The Spectator argued that the local newspaper had long been a vital career stepping stone for aspirational journalists and that its decline would close off a route into working for major national outlets. Where would the Alistair Campbells and Jeremy Clarksons of the future learn their trade (for better or worse) if not with The Tavistock Times or The Rotherham Advertiser?

All these arguments are likely still as correct as they were at the time that they composed, but none have captured the public imagination. Declining local journalism means a shrinking pool of news and media sources, as our reliance on news from social media and therefore a select few multinational intermediary companies (e.g. Meta and Google) increases. And yet, despite the arguments that have been laid out, we don’t seem especially perturbed by this amalgamation of our media, at least not to the same extent in other industries. We have developed an entire lexicon to describe the implicit value of local produce: lower carbon footprint, air miles, supporting local businesses, backing British farmers, etc. However, the ‘local’ in ‘local news’ has a pejorative, something akin to bumpkin, yokel and backwater.

Perhaps all discussion about what the loss of local newspapers would mean for the UK has focused on that very national idea: country. Perhaps we have only ever been encouraged to see the big picture: the job losses, the industry change, the reduced profitability. In truth, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. National media will always be macroscopic, but this fact is no less infuriating. In the very dissection of the loss of the local newspaper in the national press, we are facing up to the image of a desperately troubling future which, at this rate of decline in local and regional journalism, is very much close at hand. Soon we will inhabit a country in which local issues are only ever reported in the context of broader, national stories.

Should we be seriously worried?

But is this not what the national press is meant to do? Gather up stories from different corners of the country, join the dots and reveal the trends that they discover? Of course, they are. That is the bedrock of so much effective and important journalism, be it political, investigative, cultural, or otherwise. A strong national press, which is truly national and not purely focused on what happens in London and the home counties, is the vital tool with which we shine light on the Horizon Post Office scandal, or the widespread misconduct caused by the nation’s various water companies. But that is not, and cannot be accepted as, the only important definition of journalism.

Stories matter because they matter, and not because they are important to a certain number or, heaven forbid, a certain kind of person. If anything, the opposite is true. Our society is inexorably more resilient, more cohesive and more supportive of each other when we prioritise the stories which affect small groups and communities. Local bus services have been cut in rural Devon. A vital bridge has collapsed in Dumfriesshire. Communities are facing considerably delayed bin collections in County Durham. Small, isolated groups, whose problems do not map neatly against national priorities or wider campaigns, have considerable need for a press that amplifies their stories. In a world whose agenda is increasingly driven by those who shout the loudest on certain online fora, we need to build a system that ensures that news is prioritised, disseminated and heard according to need, rather than viral shareability or memeification.

The local newspaper’s greatest hour of need

But, putting this Panglossian image to one side, how can this be achieved? The only answer is a local press that is valued as an equal and effective partner to national media. For too long we have tacitly accepted the decline of the local newspaper as a progressivist fait accompli. For too long we have been encouraged to think of it as a dinosaur that, both economically and structurally, could not survive the transition into the digital age.

If we are not careful now to act to save the local paper, we risk becoming a nation full of specialists on international commerce or political developments in the Global South without the faintest clue about what the neighbours are up to. That seems a crying shame.

However, this conclusion has too often been purported by journalists from the national press and framed too willingly in the context of the national interest. If we want people to come out in support of local journalism, we need to tell them what it means for their community, not for the country.

To end, let’s return to that startling statistic. The UK likely now has fewer local newspapers than at any time since the 18^th century. Let’s think about those 18^th century Britons. The country’s population faced an almost constant reminder of the fragility of the nation-state. The American and French Revolutions would prove to the world that a country’s entire constitution could be fought over, turned upside down and revolutionarily redesigned. And, at home, the Jacobite risings posed a palpable threat to the security of the recently formed Union of Great Britain.

Against this complex and unstable international and national backdrop, those Britons still found time to kindle an interest in their little patch of the island, as the growth of local journalism in the years that followed demonstrates. If we are not careful now to act to save the local paper, we risk becoming a nation full of specialists on international commerce or political developments in the Global South without the faintest clue about what the neighbours are up to. That seems a crying shame.

Ultimately, the revival of the local paper is encoded in its community’s distinction. It must work to place its unique, seldom heard voices at the heart of its publication. It can only survive if it truly offers a kind of news that can be found nowhere else. And, for all our sakes, we need it to be able to do this.