THE EDITOR'S CHAIR: Giving you what you want, how you want it

The survey is part of some reader research we are undertaking to find out more about what you like and don’t like about the Argus.

Some of our regular readers have been kind enough to give up some of their time this week to take part in reader panels, where we will be listening to some detailed responses to what we do in print and online every day.

I’m grateful to everyone who has taken the time to complete the reader survey or take part in one of our panels.

What you, as readers, think about the Argus is hugely important to me and my staff as we consider how best to meet your needs in the future.

Our audience – across print, online and social media – is bigger now than it was five years ago.

That’s good news – and flies in the face of the doom-mongers who believe local media is in its death throes – but it brings with it a host of new challenges for newspaper editors.

The first of which is that people like me are no longer ‘newspaper’ editors.

The printed newspaper is just one part of a whole range of ways in which we deliver news, sport and information to our readers.

Many of our readers want their news delivered in different ways.

The traditional print reader wants one thing, the website user another, the Twitter follower something else.

My job is to make sure we satisfy all those needs – and then to attempt to anticipate how they will change in the future.

Later this year we will be launching an Argus app and this will provide yet another way for readers to access what we produce.

The app won’t be free (unless you buy a paper) but it will be relatively inexpensive and as easy to access as downloading music is from iTunes. It is just part of a series of exciting changes we have planned for the Argus over the next few months.

The input of our readers will be central to some of those changes.

The more feedback we get, the easier it is for us to produce products that best reflect what our readers want. So, again, thank you to the hundreds of readers who have given us their views over the last few weeks.

It is appreciated and we will do our best to give you what you want.

Don’t blame media, politicians must buck up

I am speaking at an all-day seminar organised by Rosemary Butler, the Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales.

The event will be looking at what part the media - both here and across the UK - can play in addressing the democratic deficit in Wales.

It's a difficult subject but I do not intend to pull any punches in my speech this afternoon.

My view is clear. It is too easy - particularly post-Leveson - for politicians to pin the blame on the media for the growing public apathy and antipathy towards politics.

Don't shoot the messenger is what I will be saying today.

Newspapers like the Argus cover politics from community councils to the House of Commons on a daily basis. But we cannot force our readers to be interested in politics.

We gave candidates in last year's Police and Crime Commissioner elections acres of space in print and online to get their message across to the electorate. That didn't stop one polling station in Newport getting a zero turnout.

In my view, people have a jaundiced view of politicians because of the behaviour of politicians not because of the way in which the media portrays politicians.

If politicians really want to engage the electorate they need to do so via their ideas and their personalities.

And they need to deliver on their manifestos - because people have had enough of sound bites, and spin, and broken promises.