When people ask me where I am based, I normally say "just outside of Brighton". Because who has really heard of Worthing? But I've recently been thinking that sells it short.

Yes, it's a quiet and fairly typical Victorian seaside town on the south coast of England, but things happen here. Nigel Farage recently paid us a visit. The non-league football team has seen a historic rise under the ownership of a fan and former footballer who was paralysed in a car accident. There's still a campaign going on here eight years after the disappearance of Georgina Gharsallah.

I would also say it's an area, at the very least, at risk of becoming a news desert.

Research by the Public Interest News Foundation claims that there are 37 news deserts in the UK, defined as there being "no local news outlet that solely covers that local authority", like a dedicated, independent news provider.

Higher-ups at regional news groups dispute these very findings. One such source telling me: "The current news deserts data overstates the problem due to the way it’s modelled, and we should be clearer about what a news desert is and isn’t, however [real] the risk of more news deserts is if interventions aren’t made."