How to save the local news industry? With subsidies from local councils and tax breaks for investment, according to the Media Trust. The charity argues in a report released today, Meeting the News Needs of Local Communities (pdf link),  that genuine local news reporting should be sustained through subsidies from local government advertising income. And the report calls for a re-think of the tax regime governing media organisations, to encourage investment in local reporting.

The report, led by Professor Natalie Fenton at the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre and commissioned by the Media Trust, says that funding should go to new journalistic start-ups, which could fill the gaps left by decimated or closed-down local papers: