DESPITE knowing for a few months that Northampton’s daily newspaper, the Chronicle & Echo, was about to reduce from six-days-a-week publication to just one, I felt immensely sad yesterday when the news was finally broken to staff and readers.
I have such mixed feelings about the end of daily print publishing I barely know where to start this post. And some might remind me, a vested interest, as I still work – as a freelance weekly columnist – for the paper which employed me full-time as a journalist for 13 years.
My other-half also writes a weekly column for them and is still employed full-time by the paper’s owners, Johnston Press.
And in addition to all that, I now work as a journalism lecturer at the University of Northampton, teaching the traditional trade in a (*shudders*) “platform neutral” format (news and feature reporting for print, broadcast and online).
As expected, the outcry over the loss of six-day printing has been loud and clear.
When was the last time you bought a local newspaper? Actually bought one, rather than picking one up for free or reading it online?
