Taxi to the Newsnight Studios please!...

I think the phrase is OH MY GOD! BBC Newsnight have just phoned me completely out of the blue to ask if I can make it to their studios to talk about the death of local newspapers caused by the rise of local blogs. They have obviously had a gander at TonbridgeBlog and decided that it's a good example so I suppose I should feel slightly flattered. They are probabbly right in their hypothesis that the days of local rags are numbered and that now everyone in the community can be roving reporters ever in search of gossip and policemen tripping over in the street to capture for ever and put in cyberspace. If only I'd been passing armed with my camera phone when the Tonbridge Job, at the Securitas depot, was done a fews years back! The possibility of you or I being able to capture those kind of events is increasingly likely with the rise of digital cameras and mobile internet technology. You see all I have to do is see it or think about it, then I can almost immediately type out a story based loosely on the facts and it's right there on TBlog for the whole world to see. Can the Courier do that? Or would they have to be called out from the luxury (and dryness) of their cosy offices several miles away from the action, interview people while making shorthand notes in their little pads, then go back to the office, take most of the rest of the day to formulate their report and commit it to computer. (I sound a bit like an updated 1970s advert for SMASH, the instant mash potatoe.) Then the sub editors get their hands on it and pull it around, tweaking the odd word here and there, so that it only loosely resembles the original piece, then the over all Editor may have to finally approve it. Then they have to wait maybe another five days until the report actually appears in the paper, by which time it's probably completely out of date anyway, the news having moved on to a completely different agenda. Certainly I think local newspapers are dying a slow death, it's inevitable, you can't turn back the technology clock. But then again so are national newspapers, magazines, television and radio, desktop computers themselves, which made all these things possible in the first place. Books I have deliberately chosen not to mention. They of course are here to stay! Did I agree to go to the Newsnight studios? Actually no, but only because I didn't want to disappoint the good people of Tonbridge by closing down the bookshop all day for ten minutes in a Shepherds Bush Studio. Now I'm starting to slightly regret that decision. I'm stepping outside my shop. Taxi!!!