Coronavirus diary, Thursday 30 July

Coronavirus has taken over our lives. Omnipresent, inescapable. 

We live and breathe it. And the media's obsession with it strengthens. 

Almost all my life I have been a news addict, either reporting it or following it via the media. Reporting and communication methods have changed enormously. Not for the better.

Whatever happened to news?

It goes back to my first day as a reporter on the Penarth Times in 1942, which I wrote about here a few days ago. 

The editor gave me my first lesson about news gathering - get out and find it, it won't come to you in the office. 

Today the practice is exactly the opposite. Reporters seem to be chained to their desks, or to their mobile phones, iPads and laptops. 

Not only is the style of reporting different, so is the number and variety of stories. 

Looking back at local and national newspapers many years ago, there was an infinite variety, from the dramatic front pages to the human interest stories from towns and villages throughout the country.

In one edition of Cardiff's then flourishing paper, the South Wales Echo, I counted 89 stories in nine news pages. Today's edition will probably feature two or three, with huge headlines.

It is no surprise, with the constant 24 hour flow of news - information mostly these days - that the Echo is down to a skeleton of what it was in my day.

The Echo is threatened with closure, like the South Wales Argus for which I worked for some news, which has sacked nearly half its staff.

Weekly papers have fared even worse, with hundreds closing.

The days of the local editor who, like his paper, was at the heart of the community, has long gone. 

Almost all the local papers in Britain, as with the nationals, are now owned by two vast groups, as impersonal as the news they convey. National television is as bad, with the pandemic dominating their non-stop news flow. 

For the past three days, the Spain holiday quarantine chaos has been the main daily story. Yes, reporters have been out and about around Europe but just on this one story.

And the health correspondents have worked tirelessly keeping us up to the minute on the pandemic. 

Even our 'local' programmes, which used to feature a whole range of stories, are transfixed by coronavirus.

I know I am biased, and probably out of date, but I would like to see and read more real news stories. 

As I say, whatever happened to news?