The hand written sign on the (shut) door of this newspaper district office says the Northern Echo reporter for Richmond has been re-located in Barnard Castle – that’s 25 miles away.
While not an unusual sight at the moment, after all newspaper offices are closing up and down the country, the geography involved in rural areas such as this on the County Durham/ North Yorkshire border shows up the issue on the ground – how likley is it that anyone would travel quite so far to pop in and see a reporter?
There is a mobile phone number provided and the word ‘temporarily’ appears in brackets but I found it a sad sight – it’s not that many years ago that I was the Echo’s news editor based at the Darlington head office – and then we had one, or sometimes two, reporters based here. That was in addition to the office being the base for the sister weekly reporter.
Different times indeed.
Dim Sum Digital 