Dear Editor, Reading today’s (Aug 26) comments in the Birmingham Post will create sadness amongst a generation that has got used to reading it in the same way that they snap up a Starbucks coffee on the way to the office.

Worse still and rather like a long and happy marriage we have come to take it for granted. I suspect that those who will miss it the least will be our local politicians who, even above caring what the citizens think of them and their policies, are more concerned about what the Post will say. In a strange way you have acted as the guardian of common sense when at times it is lacking in the city’s administration.

So what will we need from a new-style Birmingham Post? News is the last thing we seek, we get it by the hour on radio and television and by the minute on the internet; what we do not get via that media is the ‘gossip’ around the people who lead us either in local government or public life, who run our regional businesses and organisations, and who simply dictate the way we live our lives. We need to know who is dying and who is living, what they think, and how we can communicate with the latter, on the basis that even Trinity Mirror can’t reach the former.

We need to understand what makes them ‘tick’ and onwards how we can influence the way they ‘tick’. Will we do this on a weekly basis? We can speculate on the success of a weekly but cannot be certain; we are moving into new territory and, whilst there are a number of weekly nationals which reflect different community cultures and activities, it is clear that we can get used to a different kind of Post.

I sense that this exercise, interesting as it may be, is little about consultation and rather more about how we will all live our lives without the pleasure of a daily dose of the Birmingham Post.

Like most of your loyal readers I wish you and everyone at the Post well and look forward to a future with a new format.

Sir Bernard Zissman.