A SIGNIFICANT EVENT occurred in Bourne twenty years ago signalling a milestone in provincial journalism. Local newspapers throughout the country were amalgamating and closing yet a small market town with a population of under 10,000 suddenly found itself with a newspaper all of its own for the first time. It was called the Bourne Local.

Until then, Bourne had depended on the coverage of its life and times on newspapers from nearby towns, notably the Stamford Mercury and the Lincolnshire Free Press at Spalding, both publishing what is known in the trade as slip editions, additional pages containing items of interest and therefore justifying the title of “Bourne edition” which would attract advertising from the area, column space paid for by business and industry which is the necessary lifeblood of provincial newspapers if they are to survive.

This had been the situation ever since local newspapers began circulating in the area in 1695 with the launch of the Stamford Mercury, now England’s oldest provincial newspaper, and continued for the next three centuries until a young publisher spotted the gap in the market. He was David Moore, then aged 33, who had ten years of media experience in newspapers and local radio and decided that the town needed a newspaper it could call its own and so the Bourne Local made its appearance on Thursday 5th October 1989. It was immediately accepted by the town and although growth was initially slow, there has been a continuous programme of expansion ever since and it has now become an integral part of the community, a fitting tribute to one man’s vision while this week marks the 1,000th issue.

While national newspapers report the momentous events at home and abroad, it is the role of our provincial newspapers to chronicle the smaller occurrences so important in our lives, the hatches, matches and despatches as the births, marriages and deaths are known in the trade, the hopes and fears of those who live in the town, the successes and failures, anniversaries, records and parochial events which were in earlier times discussed on market day around the butter cross but here to be read in print and copies despatched to interested friends and relatives around the country and indeed the world. The local newspaper is an essential part of our lives in a small community and so it has been with the Bourne Local.

It began that autumn from rented office space at the old prefabricated huts in Queen’s Road that had been vacated by the then Robert Manning School, the first few editions being handed out free and published fortnightly, becoming a fully fledged weekly from December 7th with a cover price of 10p and printed by a Lincolnshire firm, Mortons of Horncastle Ltd. Within a few months, the offices were moved to new premises in a newspaper shop in Abbey Road and then to the red brick former stable block behind the market site, small and even cramped but always a hive of activity.

David Moore originally ran the newspaper with the help of his wife, reporter Charlotte Beattie, and between them they had managed to turn it into an established institution with a small band of loyal correspondents around the district who sent in regular reports about happenings in their area. But in December 1998 they decided to move on to pastures new and the newspaper was sold to Ashwell Associates, a publishing group based at Oakham, Rutland, although the new owners wisely kept to the old format and despite editorial developments and new features, the newspaper continued to appear much in the same style as before.

Soon the name was shortened to just The Local, a title that still clung to the old values of district reporting, where people matter more than events, and so we find it full of names, wedding guests and mourners at funerals, club officials, prize winners, footballers, cricketers and anglers, mums and dads and children, people, people and more people. As the newspaper expanded, embracing the new information technology as it went, more space was needed and so the editorial and advertising departments moved to larger premises at No 28 West Street which they still occupy, a central position that enables callers arrange their advertising, leave a news item or merely buy a newspaper.

Bob Feetham, the new publisher, was an experienced journalist of the old school with a background in sports reporting and under his watch The Local developed the sports coverage that remains its hallmark today. Most issues devote several pages to a wide variety of activities that are going on around the district in the evenings and at weekends with a team of correspondents to keep the copy coming in because apart from match reports on rugby, football at all levels, swimming, gymnastics, golf, hockey and athletics, they also carry columns of results, tables and fixtures for many other sports such as bowls, cribbage, darts, pool and table tennis. The annual sports awards began at this time with readers choosing the Sports Personality of the Year, an event that has set the pace for sports coverage in this town.

Group photographs have also become a major feature whether they be pupils at our school or members of our clubs and sports teams and a typical issue which appeared on Friday 29th March 2003 carried a remarkable number of pictures containing 653 faces of local people, an astounding feat for a single issue of 28 pages. This was local coverage at its very best because it reflected the old tradition that every name and every face is a potential reader and readers are the very lifeblood of a newspaper's circulation.

Editors have come and gone and there have been innovations but few drastic changes and the style has remained virtually the same. Jonathan Smith, who had joined the newspaper in 1993, served as editor until 2002 and he was followed by two talented ladies, Angela Lowe (2002-04) and Lisa Bruen (2004-07), who both filled the editor’s chair with distinction before the present editor, Paul Clark, was appointed.

In December 2005, The Local finally lost its small town status when it was taken over by the Johnston Press which already owned the Stamford Mercury and the Lincolnshire Free Press. This brought it under the wing of one of the country’s top three largest local newspaper publishers and a major force on the Internet thus giving The Local its own web site. From small beginnings in 1989, our own newspaper therefore now stands alongside the company’s other 140 outlets with a dedicated commitment to producing local news and information that both inform and reflect the important issues of the communities they serve.