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Learning to live with the nationals

The national media spotlight may be focused on the harbour town of Littlehampton, but for the team at the local weekly, life has to go on.

Detectives there are co-ordinating the search for eight-year-old Sarah Payne, who went missing near her grandparents’ home at East Preston, West Sussex, last Saturday.

Television crews and national newspaper journalists are camped in the police station car park, waiting for any updates as the search goes on.

But for the two staff at the Littlehampton Gazette, covering the story is proving a challenge.

The paper is part of the Worthing Herald series – a paid for weekly with a deadline of Wednesday morning that hits the streets the following day.

Editor Roger Green has been at the paper for four years, having formerly worked at the Derbyshire Times in Chesterfield.

He and reporter Emma Rogers have to fill around 27 pages in a paper that sells around 9,000 copies a week.

“The difficulty that we have is that we still have all the other local news, like our carnival, that we have to cover,” said Mr Green.

“We have hospital closure stories, and the future of Littlehampton harbour, where there is a proposed housing scheme. They are all big stories and it’s all got to be covered.

“It means that all the nationals are camped at the police station car park whereas we are only able to go up once or twice a day.

“All the time they are up there getting all the information drip, drip dripping out. What we are finding difficult is keeping up to date – there’s only two of us.”

But he says that there are new angles coming out all the time so the paper does try to have the latest news on the story.

If there are any major developments in the investigation, the newspaper is planning to publish stories on its website, www.worthingherald.co.uk

As for the invasion of the national media, the effect on villagers is negligible.

“For most people, they are not all that aware that the crews are here. The police station is set back from the road and you can only see the odd satellite dish,” said Mr Green.

“We had our carnival and they were filming that when leaflets were being handed out.”

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