Grim times in the newsroom

Examining media politics must be catching in America, because the liberal cartoon strip Doonesbury - published each day in the Guardian, as well as many US papers - has been treading similar ground. Rick Redfern, the fictional Washington Post reporter on the cartoon, has been laid off in a round of budget cuts and is "reduced" to writing a blog instead.

These issues are pretty close to home for me and my colleagues. On Friday, Journal publishers ncjmedia announced that it would be cutting 23 job cuts and instituting a reorganisation of its newspapers that will see The Journal, the Evening Chronicle and the Sunday Sun serviced by one joint newsroom.

I don't think I'm giving away too many secrets when I say that it was pretty grim in here that day. People are worried about their futures in terms of whether or not they'll have a job next year, and if they do, how their job will be affected.

I think most of us recognise that the moves have at least in part been forced on the company by the drop in advertising revenues that always accompanies an economic slowdown, as well as wider changes in the media landscape. As new media proliferate - the internet, 24-hour TV, news radio, free newspapers - the circulation of traditional, paid-for newspapers inevitably drops.

But readers of The Journal still expect and deserve a newspaper that consistently tells them what's going on in the world around them in an accurate and entertaining way. We'll continue trying to do that, but there's no doubt that it's getting harder all the time.

All of which is my way of saying, I suppose, that if you value your local newspapers, now is the time to support them. This isn't just about The Journal because newspapers around the country are laying people off, getting rid of different editions and closing offices. The exact same thing is happening in the newsrooms of broadcast media too.

The irony of the situation is that people's appetite for news has arguable never been greater. By the time I get into the office I have listened to the Today programme, watched breakfast television news, read the free paper left on my bus and surfed the net.

But local newspapers are the frontline of the news industry and originate many of the stories that end up in all the other media outlets, which is why you should buy The Journal today (as well as watching The Wire...)