I need, you need, we all need a good local newspaper

By Steve Finan

January 8 2022, 8:00am

Here we are in 2022, a year that marks half a century since my first job in the news industry.

That job in 1972 was, admittedly, a peripheral involvement. I worked for newsagent Johnny Taylor delivering the Tully in Monifieth. I was paid 45p a week.

Upon leaving school, I started work in a hot metal caseroom. It was robust, noisy, and frantic. But I loved the process of creating a daily newspaper. And I’m proud of the grounding in language I was given. I’d measure the English skills of we apprentice compositors against those of any graduate of any university.

Then I found my calling. I became a sub-editor. Sub-editing is an art. Good sub-editors are more valuable than gold. I enjoyed the challenge of condensing a 500-word article to 200 words, but losing no information of value.

I’m proud to say I went on to become chief sub-editor, news editor, and production editor of various papers in the DC Thomson organisation.

In my 50 years in the trade newspapers have changed greatly, as has just about everything else in the world.

But a few things still hold true. The Courier remains a vital part of life in the east of Scotland. It is the paper of record – you can regard news from any other source as rumour until you’ve read it in The Courier. You’re not truly dead until your demise is announced in The Courier.

A bloke might tweet a photo of a fallen tree and have it lauded as “instant news”. And sometimes the argument is advanced that all news can be reported this way; that we don’t need traditional newspapers any more.

But newspapers are also digital entities. They report as quickly as any other source – but with a crucial difference. A proper journalist digs deeper than a bloke snatching a mobile phone pic.

Who discovers the tree had been condemned as rotten a year previously? Who demands answers from a blame-deflecting council department? Who represents your interests in all this?

The role of a great regional newspaper (and The Courier ranks among Britain’s best) is to keep readers informed on what is happening around them. It will report what is done in the public’s name with the public’s tax revenues; fight for ordinary people; campaign as well as inform; entertain as well as provoke thought. It will tell the truth.

Unlike much of what passes as online reportage, a newspaper communicates all of this in pristine English without spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors.

All staff of all newspapers have not just good, but impeccable language skills. If we fall short of this, then let me know.