The point of journalism is to look outwards not inwards. But sometimes what happens in our inky trade reflects an ominous wider trend. Which is why I ask you to consider briefly the plight of regional journalism.

Note that I refer to journalism, not newspapers. Regional newspapers are, by normal standards, buoyant. Despite the slither of advertising to the internet, profit margins of 20 per cent are commonplace at a time when shareholders in most multinationals count themselves lucky to get an 8 per cent return. But 20 per cent is apparently not enough. All the major regional press groups are pruning outgoings, including editorial budgets. Last year the biggest, Trinity Mirror, abolished 300 jobs. This month another giant, Newsquest, announced redundancies so extensive, especially at its Glasgow titles (including the Herald), that the Scottish Parliament has begun an inquiry.

And at the Daily Mail-owned Northcliffe group, journalists don’t know whether to be more alarmed that all 112 titles were put up for sale last year, or by the fact that nobody bid enough to buy them. Northcliffe will now trim £20 million a year from budgets.

Why should you care? The answer is that there will be even fewer newspapers around in future with the resources to investigate incompetent or corrupt councils, campaign against hospital closures or over-reaching developers, put a rocket up the backsides of police forces never seen patrolling bad estates, celebrate local achievements, or simply chronicle the warp and weft of British life in all its glorious, dotty multiplicity. In other words, the diminution of regional journalism will be another nail in the coffin of that thing we call “community”.

What is community? It’s surely the glue between people. Some influential thinkers assert that this is either illusory or that it doesn’t matter. Today, they claim, we are all consumers in a global market, serviced by an internet that increasingly meets all our information, entertainment, communication and shopping needs. Why, then, should we pretend to have some bond with people who happen to live in the same street?

That view, however, is not one that politicians currently like to espouse, at least openly. Labour, Tory or LibDem, they vie to talk up local choice, grass-roots democracy and community values. Fine words. The trouble is that so many trends are moving inexorably in the opposite direction. Genuinely local shops are being squeezed out by ruthlessly “competitive” edge-of-town supermarkets (where the word competitive means exactly the opposite, because in the end they will have no competition). Post offices are being closed by the thousand. Churches are no longer meeting-places, except for a few. Pubs that once served whole communities are now often themed to appeal only to a profitable segment: usually the under-25s.

The effect of all this is to force people to drive to centralised malls for shopping, eating or entertainment. So they have no reason to walk in their own neighbourhood. The result? They don’t meet by accident and stop to chat. Another bit of communal glue disappears. Meanwhile, Government-approved urban sprawl races on, endangering the very notion of distinct communities. When every town merges into the next, and every high street from Baldock to Bangor has the same bland array of Nexts and Tescos, we won’t even be able to identify our own one, let alone feel proud of it.

When I travel across Britain now I see a polarised nation. And I’m not referring to that glib nonsense, the north/south divide. (Manchester has far more in common with London than with, say, Sunderland.) No, I mean the gulf between communities that are fiercely protective of their “glue”, and those that have been so supine that there is almost no glue left to save. It’s remarkable how often you find that towns with good campaigning newspapers also have fine parks, a butcher in the high street, a well-stocked library, an independent cinema and a rep theatre. And on the other side of the divide — sadly, the crowded side — you find that towns where there is no forum for the exchange of views and news are also the most vulnerable to hideous redevelopment, civic squalor or the chopping of public services.

To me this polarity suggests that, where communities fight hard enough, they can preserve their neighbourhood’s character — even when big business and big government seem in cahoots against them, as appears to be the case in so many planning decisions these days. But where apathy or hopelessness has taken a grip, everything is at risk. What keeps local shops, cinemas, bus routes and, yes, newspapers in business is our business. We must use them or we will lose them. Too often this simple truth occurs to communities only when it’s too late.

Why haven't I ever had the bird?

Since reading about the German critic who giggled at an avant-garde theatre production and had a dead swan dropped in his lap by one of the actors, I have been consumed by professional jealousy. In 22 years of reviewing for The Times, no performer has ever dropped so much as an expired sparrow on me.

Perhaps I don’t giggle enough. But I think it’s more to do with that damned British reserve. Performers here have a tradition of “rising above” critical barbs. Only rarely does the mask slip. Steven Berkoff once called me a “****ing toffee-nosed ****” because I was insufficiently supportive of his genius. It was the toffee-nosed bit I didn’t like. And I recall a party where a very grand soprano approached a critic who had savaged her in print, and coolly tipped her wine down his shirt. Appalling conduct. Complete waste of a decent claret. But to be assailed in the stalls by a dead fowl? In some shows I sit through, that would be a welcome distraction.

Beer and far

Good to see “no frills” airline Ryanair wooing a more sophisticated clientele. “Enlarge your beer belly!” it enthuses in its latest ads, which offer £15.99 flights to “Hamburg Lübeck”, “Düsseldorf Weeze” and “Frankfurt Hahn”.

Hmm. What do the solid burghers of Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt think about these blatant inducements to drunken stag-weekend louts? Well, I shouldn’t think they are too worried. Ryanair is helpfully depositing its sozzled punters at airports that are, respectively, 55km, 80km and a whacking 120km from the cities they reputedly serve. Quite a hike. Especially on a full beer belly.

Times Recommends

• It’s the beginning of the affair
• Afghanistan: still a price worth paying
• Heroes of the downtrodden