THE QUALITY and quantity of local news in Scotland is under the microscope like never before.

As the industry makes a final bid to fight off BBC plans to expand its local video news content, it has been forced to answer the most damaging charge of all: that it is failing to provide a good enough product for its readers.

Last month, BBC Trust chairman Michael Lyons raised the hackles of many in his audience by saying at an industry lunch in London that the local press "has nothing like the strength that it once had. It is not the same proposition that it was 15 years ago. Regional newspapers are under very severe pressure".

Later, Lyons - who as head of the Trust is responsible for carrying out the public value test on the controversial BBC local video plans - added: "There's nobody who can be satisfied with the quality of local news in most parts of the United Kingdom." The Trust will issue its decision on November 27.

Lyons's remarks are important because they indicate that the Beeb believes that there may be a gap in the market for better local news, where local publishers have long argued that the introduction of a licence fee funded competitor is unfair. Their position is that the entry of a public body will distort the market and block off the main avenue open for industry expansion.

The BBC boss's comments have angered many, but they have been especially galling to outgoing Johnston Press chief executive Tim Bowdler. Having long worked under the slogan "life is local", Bowdler resents what the BBC is implying about his industry's products.

"I would be very interested to know on what basis he made that remark," Bowdler told the Sunday Herald. "I would be the first to say things aren't the same as they were 15 years ago.

"The things that interest people have undoubtedly evolved. News is still quite high on agenda but it does not have quite the same focus. Fifteen years ago local papers broke news; that now happens online and papers are more a place for community debate. There is not such a heavy focus on court reporting or covering every council meeting."

Bowdler said total audiences - both web and online - had increased, saying: "We are now more, not less, connected with the communities we serve."

But might the outcry over Lyons's words be the sound of a raw nerve being hit? There are certainly some journalists, working across the 14 groups that produce local papers in Scotland, who believe so.

One experienced editor believes that local papers are very close to losing their traditional place at the heart of their communities. As most local paper staff are instructed by their employers not to speak to other media, he did not wish to be named.

"It's touch and go - there's a serious risk of papers becoming so remote from their readers that their future is threatened."

The local paper scene is a mixed one. The industry stretches from big-selling daily titles such DC Thomson's The Courier of Dundee, to free papers with tiny print runs. However, to most Scots, "local paper" means a weekly paid-for title, often one that has been at the centre of their communities for generations.

Staffing levels and content varies enormously from town to town. Some papers operate on a skeleton staff with only a couple of reporters, others have larger teams with specialist digital journalists and feature writers.

According to circulation monitoring body ABC, there are 102 weekly, paid- for titles being produced in Scotland today. Add to that eight daily titles and 39 free papers and this small country appears well served with local news delivered through the printed word. However, some journalists argue the news content of the papers has long been eroded by new technology and changing working practices.

The editor told the Sunday Herald: "We used to say it was the management that didn't care what went between the adverts. Unfortunately, deadlines and time pressures mean that's an attitude that we've had to adopt on the editorial floor just to make sure we get a paper out every week."

He said journalists on his title are now expected to do more production work and to upload stories onto the web, activities which have damaged the overall quality of the papers: "It's the quantity of local stories that has changed, much of it down to lack of time and lack of contact. We try to plan our way round the lack of actual news stories. Story counts are way down, headlines and pictures are much bigger and type sizes are continually being edged up.

"Managements have probably had it too easy for too long. They have operated on huge profit margins, all the time cutting back on jobs and pay. Proper investment and forethought could have put them ahead of the game, Instead they are now shouting unfair when someone challenges their monopolies."

By no means everyone in the industry agrees with this gloomy diagnosis. One editor of a leading title said he believes his paper serves its community better than ever. Rather than staffing levels being cut - as has been suggested by some industry watchers - he said that thanks to digital expansion he has more journalists in his team than four years ago, who are producing more content both for the printed product and website.

Said the editor: "Nothing has changed: People still come to us to find out what is going on because we know the area. If the Sunday Mail wants to do a three-page special they don't send reporters out into the streets to map out the area, they come to us. I would say there are more reporters going out and about. We've certainly never lost any reporters."

He said new technology has made the job "easier than it's ever been" but admits that it can be double-edged sword: "There are still good reporters out there but there are also plenty of bad ones. There are too many who want to sit down and check every website before they bother getting up off their arse to go out and chase up a story."

The biggest-selling weekly paid-for title in Scotland is Johnston's Falkirk Herald with an average circulation, according to the latest ABC figures, of 27,677 per week over the first six months of this year. Trinity Mirror's Ayrshire Post sells 26,375, with Clyde and Forth's Dunfermline Press selling 20,611. Over the first six months of this year, more than 700,000 weekly papers were sold across the 102 titles each week, roughly one for every seven people in Scotland.

But like their national cousins, circulation is in decline. Five years ago, sales of these three key titles were slightly better. The Falkirk Herald sold 31,806; the Ayrshire Post 29,509; and the Dunfermline Press 22,085. However, the circulation drop-off has been slower than that affecting national daily and weekly titles.

Simon Fairclough, director of the local paper industry body the Scottish Newspaper Publishers Association, refutes the charge that local papers should have invested more during the boom time when it was not uncommon for some titles to make profit margins of around 35%.

"There is always the benefit of hindsight. We could say the same about Gordon Brown stashing away money. If businesses went through life thinking that at any moment a state-funded competitor would be allowed on their patch, they would give up the ghost."

With the local press's traditional place at the heart of communities across Scotland under threat as never before, if would be wrong to expect the industry to stop fighting any time soon.