Evidence gathering on the current state of the Welsh newspaper Industry- The Local and Regional Press; Organisational change, Editorial Independence and Political Reporting.

The purpose of this brief paper is to analysis recent changes to the editorial and business organisation of local and regional newspapers in the UK, with a particular focus on newspapers in Wales. The paper also reviews the implications of such changes for journalistic autonomy and the range and quality of newspapers ’ political reporting. Why are newspapers important? Local and regional newspapers are crucially significant to the communities in which they circulate because they reflect, as well as shape, community identity and cohesion. Since the publication of the first local paper (The Norwich Post in 1701) they have fulfilled key political functions by informing the public sphere, articulating the public interest and ‘holding the ring ’ in significant debates on issues vital to democracy. Writers as diverse as Edmund Burke and Richard Carlyle have claimed newspapers as a fourth estate of the realm, a vigilant watchdog holding the powerful to account on behalf of the public. More prosaically, newspapers have also been the archivists and chroniclers of their local and regional communities, recording the various rites of passage (births, marriages and deaths) of members of those communities, as well as the activities of judicial and politica