The Society of Editors is urging regional newspaper editors to contact the Office of Fair Trading and local MPs to raise concerns over the OFT's draft opinion on newspaper and magazine distribution.

The Society, which represents 400 members across the industry, fears that plans drawn up by the OFT to break a countrywide monopoly on magazine and newspaper distribution could lead to the closure of hundreds of small shops – and the death of many village communities.

And it has sent a last minute e-mail to regional newspapers with a letter which it hopes newspapers will send to the Office of Fair Trading and local MPs in time for tomorrow's deadline.

Under current arrangements wholesalers are given 'local monopolies' in return for the guarantee of a rapid supply of titles to all who want them at a standard rate per copy, allowing every newsagent, however small, to carry any newspaper or magazine and charge the same price as bigger stores.

The draft opinion, released by the OFT last month, proposes to take magazines out of the delivery chain.

But the Society of Editors is warning that this will have a knock-on effect for newspapers, with distributors losing their local monopoly and being unable to cross-subsidise loss-making deliveries.

The letter says: "The present system of distribution guarantees deliveries to newsagents in all communities, however remote or disadvantaged.

"The proposed changes will increase charges to the small newsagents, many of whom also serve as sub-post offices and are centres of their communities, and inevitably many thousands will shut down.

"The independent and community retailers most at risk are self-evidently those in rural, remote and poorer inner-city locations, not something that is likely to meet with widespread local, public or political approval.

"While the OFT has a duty to examine any monopoly, the paradox is that in this case the 'monopoly' has the effect of guaranteeing diversity of choice. It ensures that most people live a few minutes away from their nearest newsagent.

"Estimates, including that of the economist Professor Paul Dobson of Loughborough University, are that as many as 20,000 local newsagents could be put at risk if this draft opinion was put into law.

"Fewer outlets mean fewer local papers, magazines and periodicals which means less diversity of opinion and a more poorly informed public. I am sure that this is the last thing any government would want.

"The OFT's decision, therefore, represents a massive threat to the public interest, surely something that must over-ride even the imperative to question a monopoly."

Copies of the full draft letter are available by contacting the Society of Editors on 01223 304080.