ABSTRACT
Many of the UK’s most experienced and successful journalists started their careers on local newspapers. Award winning investigative reporters like Andrew Norfolk, of The Times, started out on the Scarborough Evening News. Tim Minogue, whose fortnightly Private Eye “Rotten Boroughs” column, shines a spotlight on local government scandal and corruption, began his career on West Country local newspapers in Tavistock, Truro and Plymouth. Both attest to the crucial training ground such newspapers provided. Fact checking, identifying and investigating news and writing great copy, they learned their craft on local papers. Many of their stories have served the public interest, in exposing scandal and corruption, the abuse of children and the misuse of public money. With local papers in rapid decline we take a close look at the first-hand perspective of senior journalists.
