In the middle of Journalism Matters week, a new campaign from the News Media Association to highlight the power of news media journalism, our reporter Barrie White takes us inside the newsroom...

When I first qualified nearly a decade ago, my cohort and I were at the forefront of the new generation of 'digital' reporters.

What this meant was that we were trained to write for online as much as we were to put a good old-fashioned story in the paper, and how to write a headline for online when the story is out straight away.

I write this in a calm state while the hustle and bustle of a deadline day carries on around us, with one colleague filing some 'Nibs' – stands for news in brief – while another has been out to take a picture needed for the front page lead story.

A reporter today must be ready to do everything that's asked of them, whether that's writing a long lead, a small community round-up or be the 'snapper' for the paper.

They must be ready to be creative in a headline for the sub-editor to change (or steal!) as well as getting vital information across in an SEO headline online, which is designed to make your story reach more and more people.

A modern newsroom in a local paper is about making all voices be heard.

Sometime you can get carried away thinking that the front page is the 'be-all-and-end-all' if you don't get the core groups who make up the rest of the paper in it.

And then sometimes you can be bogged down in the day-to-day running of the paper that you can forget the joy of writing a front page that makes a difference to peoples' lives.

It's an incredible journey from phone-call to shorthand to story to picture to print and then all online too. And more often than not, it's the same person throughout the process, which is common across the newsroom.

In the last last eight months, our reporters have started to work across the communities at weekends and it is here that we have seen the biggest impact journalism makes on peoples' lives.

'So glad you came', 'it's great to see our paper here' and even sometimes, 'this isn't your concern' (although that's very rare) – all phrases we've heard when going to a coffee morning, a fair or even a drag race (and we don't mean the cars).

We can't thank you enough for reading our news – please keep supporting us.