RIP Tonbridge Courier....

lovely old lady from the Tonbridge WI came into my shop yesterday to ask if I'd put a piece in my Courier column about their Christmas bazaar. "No madame" I said, "I'd love to help you but I don't write it anymore!" This is the fifth such request I've had since Friday and the answer has been the same. The lovely old lady, who by the way is always on the bread stall at the Friday Country Market, also said "That's strange because the Tonbridge Courier office is closing...." I've just checked this out and indeed it is to close. In fact, so the office informs me, they are packing up tomorrow for a move to the Tunbridge Wells building and I get the impression that the staff are less than pleased about the move and that's putting it very mildly. This is of course a familiar pattern when big businesses are struggling; they start to chip away at the small sattellite areas, first the community columns and other freelancers are hit, then it's the Tonbridge office and others on the periphery, and no doubt they'll be secretaries and receptionists who are about to lose their jobs, then the full blown mass clear out to "restructure" and "rationalise" the business sections. The net result is, oh sure a more "streamlined" business to show the shareholders and the board will receive their fat Christmas bonuses because they'll have reached their cost cutting strategy performance targets, but it will be a business cut to the bone and maybe into the bone. So the long term effect is it will be most likely be devastating for the business. In this case they will lose an office in the town where, so I believe, the newspaper was born. It has already lost it's Tonbridge identity long ago, so this will just be another nail in the coffin. The combination of this office closing with the self-imposed loss of all three Tonbridge Community columnists in one go will hasten the decline of a once great local newspaper. Before too long, if that moment hasn't arrived already, there'll be absolutely no reason for the good folk of Tonbridge to buy a copy at all; it will have no relevance for them. No weekly "surgery" in Tonbridge library, which is what they have put in it's place, will ever make up for being in the town and having an ear firmly to the ground. But still there's always Tonbridge blog to fall back on!...