There can be absolutely no doubt that regional media is in trouble. Press Gazette reports that media analyst Claire Enders estimates that 40 per cent of jobs in the UK regional press have gone over the last five years.

In a submission to the Leveson Inquiry Enders cited the falling income of the major regional publishers. The numbers make for a grim story from Johnston Press down 23 per cent at £398 million to Newsquest down 56 per cent at £340 million.

It’s a slow death.

Internet impact
The story of the decline in newsprint first began in the mid-1990s with internet dial-up as online businesses such as Craigslist, Google and eBay lured away advertising revenues by matching buyers and sellers more efficiently than paper.

Regional media completely missed a trick in the move online. It sought to generate regional angles on national news stories in a bid to compete with national media.

Yet these were the media businesses that had a ready-made community; an engaged audience that willingly engaged via competitions, letters and vox-pops.

My 13-year-old daughter gets her local news from her Facebook news feed. But she has also been spotted reading the Northumberland Gazette for news about her mates, sport and music.

It’s very simple. People want to read about issues and people that are relevant to them.

Alternative models
Regional bloggers are making a valiant effort to supplement the work of the regional media. In the past I’ve recorded an interview with JesmondLocal founder Ian Wylie on the challenges of running a hyperlocal media site.

In nearby Sunderland, Josh Halliday’s SR2Blog secured him a role at The Guardian on graduation from a journalism degree at Sunderland University. As an aside it’s a crying shame that the university has let his site die. It was truly innovative model and clearly stood Halliday in good stead in his career.

The role of regional newsprint as a story teller has traditionally been critical to democracy. It was always the check and balance in holding local business and government to account. But to do it well costs money and ad revenues are no longer sufficient to support the format.

Bloggers, whatever their motivation, cannot replace the rigour of trained journalists or the discipline of editorial standards.

Regional publishers have dabbled with community networks over laid with an editorial function such as the ncjMedia network of 22 hyperlocal blogs in Northumberland but the top down approach makes it challenging to secure engagement.

At Speed we’ve tinkered with networks as a means of curating and serving content using services such as paper.li and Summify but have reached the conclusion that an editorial function is critical to prioritise and weed out irrelevant content. And that costs money.

Commercial model
We’re back to the well worn issue of revenue.

Arguably the smartest commercial move that the regional media has made in in the last 30 years is selling reprints of photos. A single photo of the football team guarantees numerous sales to proud parents.

If social media proves anything it is that there is a clear demand for local content but regional media hasn’t applied itself commercially to the communities that it serves.