“Our flame will continue to burn”
January 13, 2012 – 4:57 pm by Liz
Back in November, we blogged about the Liverpool Daily Post becoming a weekly paper. With the final edition being printed today after a run of 157 years, I felt obliged to pay homage to the paper.
Reporting modestly on page two, the paper salutes Liverpool and declares: ‘we are changing, but we have not been silenced’.
The 100-page weekly edition of the paper begins on 19 January – renamed the Liverpool Post.
Today’s closing epilogue refers to the disproportionate damage the hacking scandal has caused to the reputation of journalists and suggests massive economic changes are to blame for the demise of the newspaper business.
The method of newspaper consumption is clearly adapting and developing at a pace that almost overtakes the rest of the world. Take the team at Peppermint – these days, most of us read the news using an app rather than picking up a paper. It begs the question: whatever happened to the poor paper boy?
The Daily Post’s closing statement also questions whether we can trust what we read online, when the content may not necessarily be written by trained, independent journalists who assess and investigate. It’s a fair question.
With trust in print being tarnished by the hacking scandal, paired with the uncertainty around online content, the credibility of what we read is really being called into question.
It strikes me that the closure of the oldest title in the stable of Trinity Mirror, brings into focus the issue of trust far more than the current economic challenges we’re facing. However, I think we can take solace in this, as the question suggests that what we hold most dear to us is the integrity of our regional news and not the money-making machine that makes the world go round.
