I was in a bit of a rush to get to a meeting when I stopped in Lincolnshire to buy a bottle of water, and the last thing on my mind was newspapers.

But when the headline of the weekly Grantham Journal caught my eye I grabbed a copy and went straight back to the till, fishing around in my pockets to find the 70p cover price.

For me, the counter-intuitive ‘Victim arrested sex attacker’ worked like the legendary ‘Man bites dog’ headline: regular news words in an uncommon order provoking a must-read moment.

It was a Lincoln Crown Court report on the conviction of a sex attacker who had tried to drag his victim into a dark railway tunnel after following her out of a shop.

She’d escaped after a passer-by heard her cries for help, but the real story was in how she and her boyfriend spotted the culprit the very next morning.

They jumped on him, called 999 and then sat on him until police arrived, resulting in his arrest, prosecution, conviction and ‘indefinite’ jail sentence (this having been one in a series of similar attacks).

The splash turned to a page four package of Grantham Magistrates cases – a section that I always think is a must in any paper serious about local news.

I then enjoyed a good diet of real life stories, the 11 detailed court reports including: ‘Teenager used step mum’s money to buy cannabis’, ‘Man walks out of shop with six pizzas’ and ‘Soldier loses driving license’ (sic).

Yes, they’re straightforward crimes, but there’s always a fascination about who’s done what wrong to who for local audiences, and these stories were helped by decent active headlines – albeit with a spelling error for what should have been ‘licence’.

Other good headlines in the Friday, 14 September edition included:

• ‘Paint narrowly misses baby as it falls and covers mum’ for the page five lead;
• ‘Happy days as mums worked in the fields’ for a ‘Memory Lane’ piece; and
• ‘Thatcher death T-shirts on sale at conference’ for the page 17 lead – which had me wondering if Maggie’s home town paper has a story on her every week.

Unfortunately, that was about it in terms of news stories that really stood out, which I don’t think is quite enough to keep weekly readers engaged.

Indeed, there were only about 70 stories on around 25 news pages in a 96-page book – not quite enough to keep readers paying 70p a time satisfied if this was a typical week.

In fairness, there were also three pages of letters, a business section and a lively Gig Guide, and a healthy 50+ reports were crammed into a five-page sports section; but more news needed, please.

One other section I did enjoy was the engrossing ‘Obituaries’ page opposite ‘Family announcements’ on page 19 – containing eight local lives of the recently deceased.

It appeared to be the results of a form filled in by grieving families, very much presented as respectful editorial pieces, but the result was a really good read with fascinating details of families, working lives, achievements and good deeds.

The Grantham Journal is published by Johnston Press and was recorded as selling 15,541 a week in the latest ABCs.