Cambrian News readers bite back at Monbiot

Readers of the Cambrian News have defended the paper against the claims of George Monbiot in the Guardian yesterday.
Monbiot argued that local papers weren't worth saving because they "exist to amplify the voices of their proprietors and advertisers and other powerful people with whom they wish to stay on good terms."
Monbiot gave as an example the Cambrian News, which covers his home town of Machynlleth, and, he claims, is taking an uncritical view of the local council's backing of a planned new Tesco store.
Protestor has posted on Monbiot's article: "How you can justify such a hammering of one newspaper, which i myself happen to read, simply because they do not take the stance you require them to is laughable....I happen to have read the mentioned article regarding Tesco and it seems to me a simple report of a council meeting-is this not what local journalists are duty bound to write?
"I have also, on almost weekly occasions, seen stories by this newspaper hacking into the local councils for every situation imaginable, as well as letters in the newspaper week upon week from these councillors sick and tired of being berated in the news each week. How this fits into your ideas that the newspaper simply prints what it receives permission to do so by the local authority is ludicrous."
Greenelander posts: "It is a matter of record that this is a newspaper which has campaigned forcefully and tenaciously on a range of political and environmental issues for at least the last 35 years. To my certain knowledge it has been for that entire period energetically anti-establishment, pro-democracy and anti-sleaze. It has habitually sided with the underdog in instances of oppressiveness by local government and other authorities and as a result came to be loathed by officialdom locally and in Cardiff. "
And CanWeNotKnockIt asks: "Why have you seen fit to publish this when you've sacked 78 journalists at the Manchester Evening News and its sister titles this year? Do you think it's the height of hypocrisy to pay Monbiot for this piece at the same time?"