Don't Worry PM - It's Only Local Radio...

You can imagine the scene as the PM’s advisers suggested she did a token post-‘mini-budget’ and pre-conference media round: ‘Don’t worry PM, it’s only local radio…’

And they weren’t alone, with the likes of Paul Mason suggesting that she would get an easy ride from “a bunch of sleep-deprived non-expert presenters [who] will throw her soft questions”.

?Well, what a miscalculation.

?Local journalism may not be the well-funded and visible powerhouse it once was but to dismiss it as soft touch and somehow second division is as reckless and foolhardy as say, crashing your own economy.

I speak as someone who spent 10 years as a regional journalist filing copy for seven-edition-a-day titles and selling up to 500,000 copies a night.

I was privileged to work side-by-side by some of the best journalists I have ever encountered, be that print, radio or TV.

It was a competitive marketplace. We were well-trained and hungry to get the story and we knew our readership and viewers better than any of the nationals who sometimes parachuted in.

We knew then, as the local radio journalists exhibited in today’s round, that we might only get one shot at interviewing the PM of the day (I got Margaret Thatcher) and so we had no reason to pull our punches for fear of being missed off the interview rota in future.

We may not have been based in London. But we were never soft touches.

The once incredibly strong local newspaper ecosystem where people learned their craft and held power to account may not be what it once was, but that locally-connected journalistic passion and true understanding of local audiences still exists.

?It’s too easy to dismiss local journalism as ‘the local rag’ or ‘Alan Partridges’ but, as Liz Truss discovered today, it should not be underestimated. Partridge? More like Rottweiler.