ANDY Richardson, Group Editor, spoke to readers about how the paper is put together on #trustednewsday, part of our Fighting Fake News campaign:

After news conference, when we discuss which stories were likely to figure in Saturday’s Echo, we held a Facebook Live Q&A session so readers could ask me and Scott Wilson, the Echo’s Sports Editor, questions about the paper.

Simon Coxon sent one via Twitter which asked: “Do you think there will still be printed newspapers in 10 years time? I hope there will be.”

Scott and I shared Simon’s hope that newspapers such as the Echo will still be here for at least another decade but we admitted the pace of change in the industry makes things increasingly tough to predict.

All newspapers are finding that fewer people are buying a printed version of their products but our readership across all media – newspapers, online, and social media – has never been larger. The appetite for high quality local news is huge but the way people consume it is changing all of the time.

We have a very loyal readership who still love to get their news printed on a newspaper and while that continues, and while advertisers still see the value of papers, then they will continue to survive.

Several readers asked why do we sometimes close comments on our website when we have published stories about members of the local Travelling community.

This is a great question.

Firstly, we always think long and hard before suspending comments on any story. We are great believers in free speech and whenever possible we allow comments to stay.

Where we do suspend them it is because a line has been crossed. This could mean that the comment could have broken libel laws or it may be about active legal proceedings, or identify a person involved in a case, which could result in us as the publisher of the comment finding ourselves in contempt of court.

In other cases we stop comments because they are offensive, use foul or abusive language, or are of a racist, sexist or homophobic nature.

One of the issues we have had when readers comment on stories about the ongoing feud among some members of the local Traveller community is that they often make assumptions of guilt, or are wild accusations based on rumour, gossip or sometimes prejudice. When we believe that this has happened will block or delete the comments.

Online and in our newspaper we try wherever possible to print the facts. That is the cornerstone of what we do and it sets us apart from fly-by-night websites that are happy to publish fake news."