In August of 2016, I made what was quite possibly the hardest professional decision of my life. I walked away from local journalism, for the moment at least.

The inexorable decline of the profession, and the cynical way in which those presiding over the dismantling of the papers I had invested so much of my time in to keep afloat were acting, made the decision easier than it ought to have been.

Things were still so different back in 2007 when, as a trainee, I joined the troops on the frontlines of the award-winning Surrey Mirror newsdesk. Back then, there was one team per paper. Every paper had an editor. Reporters had patches. All something today’s trainees, chained to their desks and with a brief to pen articles designed to garner clicks rather than breaking real news, can only dream of.

Based in Reigate (and thereafter, for a while, in Redhill) my office was, crucially, on patch. If there was a story, you were seldom more than 5 minutes away by car, and usually it was within walking distance. In Reigate, the sub-editors laying out our pages were local and new the patch as well, if not better than their (usually younger) news desk compatriots.

They could spot errors because they were familiar with the area and they took a pride in the few papers they worked on because they were their papers too. And if you got something wrong, there was a walk of shame to the subs desk to explain yourself.

Fast forward to my leaving and beyond, to late 2017 when last I caught up with some of my former colleagues, most of whom have moved on, and things are so very different.

What is left of my first paper, the Reigate / Redhill centric Surrey Mirror, is now produced by reporters in Guildford at least 30 minutes away. Good luck getting to a breaking news story while it’s still breaking. Reporters often work from home, or face huge journeys to both get into the office, or back onto patch.

And my other papers? The East Grinstead Courier, which was winning awards / award nominations for its reporters back when I was chief reporting then editing is now little more than a collection of out of patch stories culled from a Kent sister paper, with a few change pages.

And the Crawley News? Folded. They even killed the website, destroying years of online history, not that the staff knew in advance this was planned. I’m told they turned up to work, and it was gone.

As for the teams, these have been decimated too. Reporters who once had a patch within a paper were told, after reapplying for their jobs and facing redundancy, that they would be working an all the papers in a central hub. And working shifts. Including evenings and weekends. Pages are subbed scores of miles from their readers, by people who have never visited the towns that feature on them, let alone lived there.

Back in 2007, I joined the Surrey Mirror at the beginning of the end of local papers. First question I asked was “where’s the fire?”. Turns out it was under the profession.