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.

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.

Manager is grumpy, apart from that its a good wee shopread more

The Carluke and Lanark Gazette is a rather old fashioned newspaper which serves old ladies and…read moremembers of the women's rural institute who are keen to find out who won the best napkin shaped like a swan at last week's competition. Best bit of the paper is court watch. From serious assaults to shoplifting, every criminal's name, age and address is published for all to see and gossip about until the end of time.

As Johnston Press papers go, the Carluke and Lanark Gazette is one of the more exciting ones on…read moreaccount of its lively court watch pages. It is also a very traditional paper and continues to wrok in conjuction with many local organisatons to help promote activities in the town. With an experienced team at the helm, it remains one of the safest local papers in the Scottish market at the moment.

The Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser covers one of the roughest areas of Glasgow so this is no…read more"cats up trees" publication. Owned by Scottish and Universal Newspapers, who own tons of other titles such as the East Kilbride News and the Hamilton Advertiser, the newspaper has all the usual suspects such as births, deaths and marriages and classifieds. The Advertiser provides the most extensive coverage of Airdrie Football Club who play in the Scottish First Division and Coatbridge's Albion Rovers who play in the Third Division.

The bland boxy exterior of this building belies the amount of space inside, which appears at first…read moreviewing to be larger than anticipated, with different levels stepping up towards the rear of spacious atrium. It has something of the appearance of a shopping mall, and according to our tour guide this was in part the inspiration behind the design. The different levels actually conceal the studios, with the smallest Studio 1 (radio) closest to the front, and the largest Studio A (telly) at the rear. These are cleverly located in the central core to help reduce exterior noise, and are isolated from the offices and other smaller studios that line the outer walls on four levels. The main reception area is frequently used for live broadcasts, such as bands and so forth. This has become a semi-permanent area at the north end overlooking the river. There's a small cafe here for audience members. It's a really interesting space - totally off-limits unless you're doing one of the pre-booked tours of course - but it's definitely worth getting yourself on one of these. I particularly liked the main radio Studio 1, which is set up to accommodate all sorts of recorded or live radio dramas. It has traps in the floor that reveal different gravel surfaces for footstep recordings, a staircase with three different surfaces, a bed area and even a fully-equipped kitchen - all just for recording sound effects!

Finally got round to doing the BBC tour when new dates were released recently. Parking is free with…read moreyour ticket and there's a café in the foyer if you're early for your tour (the café and foyer are open to visitors/passersby). Once the group of 28 (current max. group size) was checked in we were greeted by our guides Amy and Chris, who were chirpy and enthusiastic and eager to answer any questions no matter how strange! As you might expect, the building has an interesting and creative design - industrial to reflect the Clydeside's shipbuilding heritage, with 'the street' at its heart - several levels of open spaces in the centre of the building to facilitate creative collaboration and are sometimes used to broadcast from. On the tour we got a behind-the-scenes look at various departments and studios and heard lots of info about how shows are produced and broadcast, along with some funny stories. We got a peek at Shereen Nanjiani and her team broadcasting her show live on Radio Scotland, and weather presenter Anne Lundon popped by for a chat and took questions from the group when we were in the Reporting Scotland studio. We also got to pose as newsreaders and give weather presenting a bash!

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.

Once again, it is difficult to tell why the Scottish version is radially different to the national…read moreversion. Of course, it has plenty of articles on local things, but has pretty much the same political bias and commentary as the English edition, something that might ultimately undermine its Scottish identification. Although they do cover Scottish sport and arts, it take ore than that to be genuinely Scottish- the Scottish staff do a great job, and their involvement is not to be brushed aside, but I don't feel it is really enough to claim that this edition is distinct from the one I used to get in London.