Cumbria's local newspapers should double up as post offices and drop-in centres for the elderly, according to a new report.
Meanwhile journalists and sub-editors on regional titles should be retrained to drive buses for the disabled, work as lollipop men, and make balloon animals to entertain children.
The report – The Future of Local Newspapers In The 21st Century – comes as many titles struggle to survive amid competition from 24-hour television news and the internet.
Last week the Cumberland News, which in its heyday in the 1950s had a daily circulation in excess of 250,000, sold just six copies, two of which were bought in error.
Meanwhile the once-mighty Barrow Evening Mail laid off its entire editorial staff, leaving the paper to be produced by a girl on work experience.
“These are dire times for regional newspapers,” said the report’s author, Prof Claire Fogarty of the University of East Anglia. “If they are to survive they must diversify from their traditional core function.
“In the future I see newsrooms being used for a range of community-based activities, such as whist drives, coffee mornings and adult learning. Instead of covering council meetings and court cases – which no-one is interested in – reporters must take a more proactive role, such as delivering meals-on-wheels and tidying gardens.”
Prof Fogarty cited the example of the Stoke Sentinel, which last month was renamed the Stoke Sentinel and Natter Club and now caters for pensioners’ groups across the city.
Editor Miles Thompson said: “Normally my job is to use my many years of journalistic experience to decide the content of that day’s paper and write editorials. But you have to move with the times. Yesterday, for example, I was manning the projector for Mr Jessop’s informative talk on willow weaving, which was very well received.”
The decline of regional journalism is thought to have started in the late 1980s, when government legislation banned chip shops from using inky newsprint.
Since then a steep decline in circulation has led to widespread staff cuts and newspaper closures.
Prof Fogarty said: “Journalism was once regarded as a glamorous profession. But with the average wage for a reporter now less than £2,000 a year, many young people who may have once considered a career in newspapers have decided they would be better off making trainers in Taiwan.”
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