Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman today described pay for journalists in the regional press as "terrible".Paxman, by video-link to the Is World Journalism in Crisis? conference hosted by Coventry University, also spoke about regional journalists being so overworked that they can't hold the powerful to account.
Paxman said: "People I know who work in local newspapers now find themselves having to produce so much stuff that there is very little room for them to even go through the basic functions of journalism, of putting in the phone calls and casting a sceptical eye on what people with powerful, vested interests tell them.
"You can look at the sums. The NUJ will give you the figures. You will find there are fewer local newspapers and there are fewer journalists working on each of those papers. That means they have to cover more ground and cover that ground more thinly.
"It's not a reflection on them. It is not a criticism of them. It is an expression of the environment in which they find themselves."
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