Kate Griffin freelance journalism and editing

Staffing is one of the biggest headaches for many community newspapers. While even the most understaffed regionals usually have somebody in the building during normal office hours and somebody to take messages over the phone, community newspapers don’t have that luxury. The usual scenario is to have just one or two part-time members of staff.

Who cares about journalism? Judging by the turnout at last night’s meeting, the answer is: “More people than you might think.” The Long Room at Oxford Town Hall was packed with local journalists, councillors and members of the public.

We’ll be munching on mince pies tonight at the NUJ branch meeting. The meeting, at Oxford Town Hall, will be held at the new earlier time of 6:30pm and there will be sandwiches (as well as mince pies) to make things easier for people coming straight from work.

There’s a lot to discuss tonight, not least the worsening situation at Newsquest. The company, part of American group Gannett, is using the current economic climate as an excuse to impose pay freezes and job cuts, despite the fact that profits are still very high.

It’s a shocking statistic, but one that everybody knows: 70% of women are wearing the wrong size bra. Or is it eight out of ten women?

Northcliffe Media is going all local. Or, as the annual report and accounts for 2007 puts it, “[i]t has been revitalised as an integrated provider of local media services”. The company, part of the Daily Mail group, intends to expand its "online network of ultra local news [...] to over 120 community portals" by the end of the year.

In my last blog post, I wrote about how many regional papers are calling themselves community newspapers despite being nothing of the sort.

I want to reclaim the term "community newspaper".  A real community newspaper is created by the community with the fundamental aim of enriching the community it serves. This enrichment may take many forms, including but not limited to:

At the time of writing, Google is returning 1,160,000 results for the search term “community newspaper”, as opposed to 192,000 for “regional newspaper”.  On that basis, you could be forgiven for thinking that community journalism has become the most prevalent form of print media in the world today.

At the end of next week, I’ll be leaving Leys News, the community newspaper I’ve been editing for the past two years. I’ve learnt a lot in that time, but the biggest epiphany was this: community journalism is a sector in its own right.