As there is an on-going debate about the viability and usefulness of the local press in the digital age, I thought I would conduct an experiment and run through the pages of the latest edition of my local paper - the Islington Tribune - which covers my London borough.
These are the news stories that interested me. Few, if any, are likely to make it into the Evening Lebedev.
This week the Tribune told me that the fight to save the Finsbury Health Centre, a landmark building in the history of British architecture, had been lost leaving a High Court challenge the last resort for campaigners.
The latest development in the case of a registrar Lillian Ladele who is refusing to marry gays at Islington Town Hall on religious grounds: Her High Court appeal is being funded by a religious group.
Arsenal Football Club has won permission to turn a community building into a block of flats after a planning inspector overruled Islington Council.
Entire teaching departments could be axed at London Metropolitan University which has to pay back £38 million owed to the Government.
Oscar winner Emma Thompson is to speak out about the horrors of sex trafficking at a Holloway theatre.
Islington Council has refused to answer four Freedom of Information requests, including one about Freemasons working for the council.
A massive debt on building work has forced the Whittington Hospital to suspend its ambition to be an independent trust.
A sports centre promised for the community by Arsenal hangs in the balance with councillors and public opinion divided.
A vicar has reached out to vandals who ransacked his church.
Gift register shows councillors received Arsenal directors box seats, scarves and homemade cakes.
A man is in a serious condition after a stabbing.
A cleaner has been found dead in bed.
Alcohol can be sold at a shop opposite a primary school, despite objections from teachers and councillors.
As well as the news there is....a double page spread of letters. A section reviewing films, theatre, books, rock and classical music. A feature about local political campaigner Bob Doyle who fought in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and has just died. A piece by former Ham & High editor Gerald Isaaman about how he helped unleash a myth about the Highgate Cemetery vampire. Plus two really good columns about Arsenal and Spurs written from the fans point of view...and a recipe for lamb shanks.
How much do I pay for all this? Nothing. It is a free paper, the Islington-edition of Eric Gordon's Camden New Journal. It is well written, well edited and well subbed. It is full of news that matters to the local community and remains essential reading even in the brave new world of Digital Britain.
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