Always standing by you in these troubled times

This year has been one of the most disruptive and uncertain in living memory.

The coronavirus has swept the globe leaving a trail of misery and hardship in its wake.

Governments have been grappling with a relentless succession of difficult and complex decisions in order to secure the best – or least worst - outcome for their citizens.

In the news media industry, part of our job has been to help our readers make sense of these unprecedented events.

We have reported on every twist and turn of the local and national lockdowns and kept you up to date with vital public health information.

It’s a role we take very seriously, and our journalists are better equipped than anyone else to do the job.

And we know that our journalism is making a difference, as audiences for trusted news and information have soared during the crisis.

Independent research shows that the public place great value on news and information from sources they can trust during the pandemic.

Providing the public with trusted and accurate information is at the heart of what we do.

The local and national news media have been a fundamental part of the country’s response to coronavirus and will continue to be so.

But journalism itself has not been immune to the challenges of the pandemic.

Advertising revenues, the lifeblood of independent journalism, have been hammered by the economic downturn leaving us with less money to invest in the journalism we all want to read. At the local level, many news brands are in a perilous position.

We now urgently need the government to intervene with a series of targeted initiatives to help sustain local independent journalism in this country.

This week is the News Media Association’s Journalism Matters campaign when we celebrate the importance of journalism in our society.

We hope you will join us by reflecting on all the great things that journalism does for our society and will continue to do for many years to come.

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‘To help our readers make sense of these unprecedented events, we have reported every twist and turn of lockdown and kept you up to date with vital public health information’