Internet ‘will not kill local papers’

The Internet would be the saviour rather than the destroyer of local newspapers, Derby Evening Telegraph editor Keith Perch told newspapers executives from across the UK.

“The Internet will not kill local newspapers – it will simply give us the reason, and the ability, to become much better,” he said in a speech to the Newspaper’s Society’s senior management forum.

“I believe that the Internet will push us into a new era in which the quality of our newspapers will grow immeasurably and they will play an even more vital role in local life.”

Mr Perch said the problem with the Internet was “information overload”. Readers were not going to wade through 2,000 sites to find out about crime in their street. They trusted the local paper to find the information and edit it into a form they could understand.

But with so much information available on the Net, papers would have to produce articles that were far better researched than at present. They would also have to be better-written.

Mr Perch said the Internet offered newspapers reassurance on both these points. He cited a Derby Evening Telegraph backgrounder on health care for the elderly. Normally, he said, it would have taken a reporter perhaps a day to produce.

But the page had been filled by a sub in less than two hours, using a well-researched and authoritative article from a website devoted to the subject.

Click here to reach his speech in full.

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