Sir Ray hits back at doom merchants

That great believer in the local press, Sir Ray Tindle hits back at the doom merchants predicting the death of regional newspapers in a letter to The Guardian today. Sir Ray writes: "Perhaps it is the worst downturn since the second world war, but it can hardly be as bad as the war itself, and the local press came through that just as it has survived every downturn since. Our Sunday Independent goes back to the Napoleonic wars and many of our other papers are 125 or 150 years of age. The three of us who run this group have over 125 years in local weeklies. We'll survive this problem just as we have survived all the others because we have the finest journalists and representatives and management in the newspaper industry and we give our readers what they want - local news in great detail."

Sir Ray has always believed that local newspapers, particularly weeklies, offer a unique news service that no other media can provide. I interviewed him for Press Gazette earlier this year, you can read it here.