The Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter reports the news from, guess what, the Dumbarton and Vale…read moreof Leven areas. The newspaper covers some poverty stricken areas so it is not a "cats up trees" kind of publication. The newspaper shares an office with the Clydebank Post; both are owned by Clyde and Forth Press media group. The distance from Clydebank to Dumbarton means locals can't just pop in with the news or a photo of their grandson for the birthday section. The Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter also has a Twitter account with 100 followers.

Like all Clyde & Forth newspapers, you can expect the Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter to be a…read morelittle bit grittier than your average local rag. Rather than err on the side of caution, this paper thrives on the court watch scene which makes it a particularly good read for local gossips. The only problem is the fact it shares its office with the Clydebank Post, meaning it lacks a regular local presence on the streets of Dumbarton.

I used to write for The Motherwell Times before they moved to this new building. It's a good local…read morepaper. I'm semi-obsessed with local newspapers, always devouring one wherever I go. There was one in Northern Ireland that actually had in bold on one page 'Have you lost a dagger?' The Motherwell Times is getting skinnier and skinner, beefed up with alot of advertisements and profiting with the always birthday messages, usually with embarassing baby pictures in there. The news isn't particularly lively, with Motherwell still bearing the bruises of Thatcherism but the writers do a genuinely good job of covering local news including all things related to North Lanarkshire Council.

Motherwell Times, owned by the Johnston Press group, covers the news of Motherwell and the…read moresurrounding areas. Its office is handily situated in the centre of town. Most Johnston Press titles are situated in affluent areas and the stories tend to be of the "cats up trees" variety. However, the Motherwell Times covers some poverty stricken areas so the content tends to be harder news.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and unfortunately this has had a negative impact on…read morethe poor old Rutherglen Reformer. Once the staple of the community, the local rag has now lost its permanent local presence in the area and is based in its umbrella group's centralised offices in Hamilton. At the moment, the Reformer appears to be coping reasonably well with the enforced changes, helped by its weekly surgeries, but with an ageing readership, only time will tell if it survives in an increasingly struggling industry.

The Rutherglen Reformer covers news in the Rutherglen and Cambuslang areas…read more The office has moved to Hamilton, quite some distance away, but the editorial team holds surgeries every Friday from 11am to 1pm in Rutherglen Town Hall. It is a real pity all these local newspaper offices are closing but needs must in tough times for the print media I guess.

The Milngavie and Bearsden Herald is a perfectly good local newspaper. You won't find cutting edge…read morenews stories in here - but you will find a good splattering of reporting on local events, local gossip and local people. It's also really cheap, which is reassuring in today's economy! The Milngavie and Bearsden Herald seems to share quite a large amount of their stories with the Kirkintilloch Herad - as identical articles/fillers seem to appear in both newspapers.

Rarely referred to it by its Sunday name, the M&B Herald is either the Milngavie Herald or the…read moreBearsden Herald depending on which of the areas you hail from. That's not to say you'll find yourself being threatened if you call it one in the other. After all, like most Johnson Press papers, these titles cover reasonably well-to-do areas where the biggest stories tend to involve community council's objections to portaloos and flower arranging contests. But the M&B Herald does its job well and when a big story does come up, the experienced team is generally up to the job. With decent sports coverage, including a section dedicated to Partick Thistle, this paper continues to do well in a difficult time for print media.

This really is a specialist publication, although in the football mad city, it has a wide…read morereadership. Like The Digger, it comes like a fanzine, but has well-written and considered articles on the Hoops, often displaying a fierce independent spirit and determinedly against any moves that takes the club away from the fans. It can also be a far more interesting read than the sports' pages of the nationals, as it takes a strong line on just about every issue connected to the team.

The Celtic View is essentially Pravda for the green and white minded of the city. You can expect to…read moreread stories about how a new Asian signing used to fall asleep hugging a knitted doll of Peter Grant, how some fan has named his daughter Henrik and see pictures of celebrities wearing Celtic tops. Nevertheless, toeing the line has at least ensured it gets interviews that newspapers are unable to get and it should be commended for its thorough coverage of all age groups throughout the club. With the odd good feature as well, it's a decent read and one of the better club magazines in the UK market.

East Kilbride is the biggest town in Scotland so its local newspaper has a lot to cover including…read moresome affluent areas some less affluent areas. The area encompasses a hospital, shopping centre and tons of schools, all typical breeding ground for good stories. Annoyingly, the office is in Hamilton which is miles away. Such office closures need to be carried out in the face of tough times for the print media but it is a shame to lose the local paper face to face feel. However, the East Kilbride news have tried to salvage this by offering editorial surgeries every Thursday lunchtime in the library.

It's an indication of the demise of local newspapers in the UK that the East Kilbride News was…read moreforced to close up shop in the town it covers. Instead, it is now based solely in Hamilton in a move which will surely dilute reporters' abilities to have fingers on the local pulse. It's a great shame for a paper like the EK News which actually retained good links with the community.Indeed face to face contact has now diminished to one weekly editorial surgery. Nevertheless the paper continues to battle valiantly on and offers good exposure to local organisations. Serving one of the biggest towns in the UK, this is a generally better-than-average local paper with plenty of scope for a wide range of news. The initial signs have been reasonable, but only time will tell if the lack of a local presence will take its toll on circulation figures long time. Hopefully not.

As local newspapers go, the Greenock Telegraph is probably the best on offer in Scotland in this…read moredifficult time for print media. While others have been forced to err on the side of caution thus diluting their ability to break stories, the Tele still commands enough respect in its catchment area to be a real force. Locals are fiercely passionate about their local rag and circulation figures remain high, especially given the publication is daily. As well as excellent local news coverage, the experienced team do a fantastic job of covering local sporting sides, in particular, football team Greenock Morton.

The Tele, as its known down in Greenock, is one of Scotland's best selling evening Newspapers. BBC…read moreRadio Scotland read out its front page every evening along with the Evening Times and the Aberdeen Evening Express. A great triumph for such a little paper produced in such a little town. My household were subscribers for years, and getting your photo in the Tele was a right of passage for every school kid in the area. However it lost an air of credibility a few years ago running an editorial on the schools system in Inverclyde that lost the publication some respect in a few socioeconomic sections of the town. Nevertheless, the Tele is an undoubted success through the Inverclyde area and covers everything from the best Morton coverage 35p can buy and is a must for graduation and wedding photos photos of anyone hailing from the area. Need a plumber or someone to clear your loft out? The classified section is a first stop for employing local people and for a competitive price! The also run 25, 50 and 100 years ago today sections in which they print articles from the archives - a great look into the past! An institution in the area, and worth every penny!

The Glasgow Guardian is the independent student newspaper for the University of Glasgow. This…read moreplucky little paper is one of the longest running in Scotland and it has a great reputation in student media circles. It is regularly awarded the Best Student Newspaper at the Herald's annual Scottish Student Media Awards and has been nominated for Best Student Newspaper at the Guardian's British Student Press Awards. If you're a student at the University of Glasgow then you can contribute and meetings usually take place in the Williams Room of the John Macintyre Building on Campus. Copies of the paper can be found across campus and in many places in the West End of the City, particularly in the shops and bars of Byers Road and Gibson Street. Their website has recently had a major facelift and is looking pretty darn good- check it out.

During my time at Glasgow I'd often look out for the new copies of this freebie arriving at the…read morelibrary or reading room. I found it far more opinionated and cleverly written than you'd expect, and managed to bypass the cliched "stop the war" and "make poverty history" articles that often clog up student journalism. If I'm walking by the GUU I'll still occasionally dive in and nick a copy, though it does make me feel a bit old now. I even managed to get a couple of music reviews printed here in the bygone days, though unfortunately the same year they let a complete dobber from my Sociology class have his own opinion column, where he'd use flowery language and make meaningless statements such as "The ipod generation is all about the fetishisation of information." Tosser. Thankfully, he's long gone from the pages. So enjoy.