I think I've just made my point.

I think I would just say don't replace the PCC with something vastly more expensive, which is going to cost us a lot more to be involved with it. We heard before lunch that the regional and local press is in a fragile financial state, its health is fragile ...

Well, I would argue that journalism in the regional press is not lesser than the journalism in the national press, so I wouldn't support an idea that you had separate regulatory bodies for regional and national papers.

No, I wouldn't, and I don't think it's necessary to insist that you have an editor who is working in Wales on the PCC or whatever follows from the PCC. The code of practice applies right across the UK. Certainly as far as Wales is concerned, the ...

I think the great merit in Wales is the ease of accessibility to the people running the government in Wales. It's a smaller pond, if you like, and that's a great advantage, that it's quite easy to get to speak to people and get your point of ...

Fear would be overstating it, but the very fact that they're keen to get the newspaper to support their objectives I think indicates they realise the importance of a local paper that's well connected in the community.

I think it's worth bearing in mind for a local paper the politicians that reporters have most contact with will be local councillors. You need to keep that context in mind. We're not talking about having conversations with ministers of state or the high and mighty. We do ...

If a town loses its paper, then clearly courts and councils are not being reported and held up for public scrutiny. I don't know about my colleagues, but in my paper we cover the courts still. But I think what I was talking about more was crime reporting than ...

-- that's what happens when the police don't inform us of crime.

You want to instill confidence by suppressing what is actually happening and --

But it is actually a Home Office directive to chief constables to manage the perception of crime --

If you speak to the chief constables they will be open and tell you that they are charged with controlling the public's perception of crime and they are very anxious to not see too much crime reported in local papers.

Can I just say in terms of press offices, I think all organisations have these press offices now and very often they're poaching our most experienced reporters to staff them, but in our experience, very often these press officers themselves will request off the record meetings and briefings to ...

As I said earlier, all of our corrections appear on page 3. That means for the vast majority the correction is appearing at a much earlier position in the paper than the original story. I have agreed on one occasion to publish a correction and apology on page 1 because ...

I think taking a story down off a newspaper website isn't difficult, but it doesn't solve the problem, as we found with a bit of experience. We were trying to resolve a libel claim, and we took the offending articles off our website, but the complainant's lawyers ...

I'd also add that our letters page is open to readers to put alternative points of view. If they disagree with the way that the newspaper has handled a story, they're quick enough to write letters for publication telling us that, and we publish them.

Yes, but in the same way as if there was a readers' editor, that reader's editor would presumably still be an employee of the company.

I'd like to think that I'm the readers' editor on the Evening Post. All complaints come to me, I lead the investigation into them, I question the reporters involved, the section editors involved. I decide if the complaint is justified. If it is, I agree the wording of ...

I think the threat of potential cost with CFAs clearly has a chilling effect on all newspapers and it causes you to think very deeply before you decide to publish something.

As far as prior notice is concerned, again, as a general rule we approach people who are the subject of stories before the stories are published to give them an opportunity to respond. It's not unusual for us to delay publication of that story by 24 hours, if they ...

We haven't used subterfuge in the time that I've been editor of the Evening Post. I can't answer for if it was used before, I don't know. But generally, on a general point, when I have meetings with reporters to discuss different issues, they're always ...

The same answer. I've never done it, never been asked to do it.

No.

No, I take exactly the same view. I think it's just a given that the editor has the right and an obligation to know what the source of a story is. I don't say I ask every reporter on every story, "What's your source?" but there are ...

We're still producing good papers that people want to buy.

What we're finding in Wales of course is where the public sector is such a big employer, about half of our readers work in the public sector, that more and more public sector organisations are only advertising vacancies, when they have them, on their own websites. So that's ...

I think national papers' sales revenue, cover price revenue is a much larger percentage of the overall revenue than is the case in the regional press where advertising revenue is the majority.

I think the general picture is over the last five years advertising revenues in the regional press have about halved.

Yes. The South Wales Evening Post is a three-edition daily, covers three different counties in South and West Wales. Three separate editions allow us to focus very much on local news and local sport, which are the staple of the product.

That's right.

They are.

Spencer Feeney.