Why we should support our local paper

People can access the news of their choice instantly, from anywhere in the world, and for free. And of course, columns like this one, and hundreds of thousands of blogs, are never printed at all '“ if anything, there is more news available online than offline.

So this must be a good thing, right? Well, not entirely. The world's newspapers are in big trouble at the moment. Newspapers' sales figures are dropping dramatically, and more and more titles, particularly local papers, are going bankrupt and falling off shops' shelves. In America, there was even a national 'buy a newspaper' day recently, to encourage support for printed papers.

Even though there is more debate than ever, I don't think these changes are entirely positive. The role of the media, as well as to inform the public of current events, is to report the news and follow the stories that politicians don't want you to. Important debates are started as a result of journalists' hard work and investigations, and in-depth investigations are time-consuming and expensive.

Prolonged campaigns by newspapers have led to real change on so many occasions, even when they at first seemed hopeless.

I don't know anything about the Bexhill, Battle, or Hastings Observers' financial situations at the moment, but if we want this invaluable service to continue, if we want to ensure that local debate continues, we should support our local papers.