Our local paper’s distribution reaches from Albury-Wodonga to the Upper Murray on both sides of the border, the Riverina and beyond Benalla and Mount Beauty almost to Omeo and west to Balranald and Deniliquin.

The population is not great but the area is, and it is important wherever we live.

Seventy five per cent of country people read newspapers compared to 25 per cent in the metropolis.

The Border Mail’s daily readership is almost double that of other Fairfax papers at Bendigo and Warrnambool and thousands more than Ballarat.

When its advertisers leave it because it becomes a local rag instead of its present high quality newspaper, as it will if 23 reporters and photojournalists are sacked, Fairfax will no longer have a significant presence or purpose here because its parent paper The Age won’t give thorough coverage to the issues we need, indeed have, to know about.

We won’t have an alternative unbiased, accurate source of readable news which can be kept for reference.

Throughout the Upper Murray in Victoria and NSW are dead areas where there is no radio or television reception and The Border Mail is their only connection with local news.

Up to 40 per cent of readers in the area covered by The Border Mail do not have computers and cannot receive news electronically.

The Border Mail is their daily fix.

You can’t remove 23 staff without suffering the consequences, and we will miss every one of them.

— JEAN WHITLA,

Wodonga