One of the UK’s oldest newspapers marks its bicentenary this month with a prestigious award and another cause for cheer: a far smaller drop in circulation than its peers in an increasingly tough local media world.

Vowing an “attention to utility” on its launch in May 1825, Northern Ireland’s The Impartial Reporter saw a 2.4 per cent slide in its circulation in 2024 — one of only five UK weekly titles to shed under 3 per cent.

While Britain’s local media faces an existential threat, The Impartial Reporter has innovated with exclusive investigations and striking drone photography, helping it slow its print decline and boost online readership.

Eight out of 10 adults in the UK read local media titles in print and online every month, proving community journalism remains in demand.

But competition from Big Tech and social media in the war for eyeballs and advertisers had sent print sales into a “persistent decline in the last 30 years” and left online media at the mercy of powerful platforms, said Tom Chivers, a lecturer at Goldsmiths in London.

Only a handful of publications of The Impartial Reporter’s vintage remain.

Local papers “have increasingly been consolidated into these bland news hub websites”, said Chivers, who is also campaign co-ordinator at Media Reform Coalition, a lobby group.

The Impartial Reporter, owned by the Trimble family for 180 years, has since 2015 been part of Newsquest, which along with Reach and National World own some 40 per cent of the more than 1,000 local UK news outlets.

The island of Ireland’s third-oldest paper, it is still in its original premises in County Fermanagh, the westernmost part of the UK.

Typically running up to 88 pages, it has revamped with new sections and opinion writers since editor Rodney Edwards took over in September 2023.

It has also forged a reputation for crusading investigations, helping it win local weekly of the year last month for the second year running.

One investigation focused on a pupil sexually assaulted by a teacher who was later jailed. “It was very uncomfortable for us — but stories like this are necessary,” said Edwards.

An 18-month investigation into another sex scandal led to a string of arrests. The paper also exposed the UK’s biggest puppy breeding factory involved in a dog-trafficking trade.

“Sometimes local newspapers can be too soft,” said Edwards. “Focusing on investigations brings in readers.”

Last year’s median circulation drop among UK weeklies was around 16 per cent and only two of more than 340 titles managed growth, according to a Hold the Front Page analysis of ABC data, a site focused on local press.

By contrast, digital audiences for outlets owned by Reach, Newsquest and National World grew by 12 per cent from 2021-25, according to industry data from Ipsos Iris.

“What is challenging is this narrative that local media is dead,” said Paul Rowland, editorial director of Reach’s network of websites.

Many big local news media do not have paywalls and need tech platforms like Google and Facebook to drive traffic their way and pop-up ads to fund their journalism. But they are vulnerable: Facebook parent Meta decided in 2023 to scrap its UK news service while AI tools scrape local media content in what is “intellectual property theft, really”, Rowland said.

The Impartial Reporter, still a minnow online albeit growing fast, was born when the island of Ireland was part of the UK and international concerns felt distant: the outbreak of the first world war only made page seven.

In 1916, it was the island’s first paper with an eye-witness account of the Easter Rising rebellion in Dublin that proclaimed an Irish Republic.

Following partition in 1921, it became a firm advocate for pro-UK unionism (the rival Fermanagh Herald is considered pro-Irish nationalist), although The Impartial Reporter has since become more cross-community.

When Enniskillen was bombed by the IRA in 1987, during Northern Ireland’s Troubles conflict, circulation soared to almost 13,000 and topped 14,000 in December 1995 — notable because “there are 19,000 homes in the area,” said Denzil McDaniel, who joined in 1973 and was editor from 1987 to 2014.

Despite its slide to a 2024 print circulation of 6,097 Henry Faure Walker, Newsquest chief executive remains “pretty positive” about local media.

“Print is likely to continue to decline,” he said, but publishers had to focus on trying to “buy more time whilst you build out a strong digital-only business that can sustain itself just on the digital revenues”.

Squeezing a decent revenue stream from Big Tech remains a challenge. Owen Meredith, head of industry body News Media Association, hoped new UK regulatory powers “will create a fairer playing field . . . helping to ensure a truly sustainable future for local journalism”.

Douglas McCabe, at Enders Analysis, said: “If I’m being pessimistic, [local media is] still not at the bottom — there’s still some pain ahead.”

But Faure Walker was upbeat. “We think people are going to love local news [for] as far as we can see out. They have for the last 200 years.”

Additional reporting by Jennifer Williams

Data visualisation by Keith Fray