Press-Ganged

For twenty years Mike Scialom watched a regional newspaper move from analogue to digital, and these interlocking essays tell what that shift cost. He begins with his own unusual route into journalism, then traces how the trade was remade for the digital economy, partly by design and partly by force, changing how news is gathered, read and paid for. Along the way, he argues, the truth was sometimes among the casualties, as the era of spin gave way to fake news and alternative truths.

There is hope here too: the book closes by celebrating the launch of a new paper, the Cambridge Independent, in the middle of the industry's biggest upheaval. It is a working journalist's view from inside the newsroom, for anyone who cares about local news and wonders what happened to it.