Social media newspaper enthusiast likes it local

Thorsten Kirschner, a German newspaper enthusiast, who has a passion for press freedom, has a sizeable social media following and posted a shot of himself with a Press. He said was impressed by the breadth of coverage.

‘I enjoyed reading it and seeing what life is like over here,’ said Mr Kirschner.

He was pleasantly surprised that the Guernsey Press was not dominated by news from financial services and enjoyed the focus on local affairs and events, down to updates on things like weather and tides.

‘Living on an island, those sorts of things must be important so it’s nice to see that they’re put in the paper,’ he said.

Mr Kirschner, who lives in Berlin and works as a chaplain in the German military, has thousands of followers on his Instagram account @paperboyberlin, which he set up because of his fascination with newspapers.

He documents his travels around the world by taking photos of himself reading city, town and regional papers. He has now been pictured with more than 250 newspapers, in places as diverse as Russia, Jordan and now Guernsey.

‘It’s more interesting to see how papers around the world focus on the news of their place instead of following the big headlines like national newspapers do,’ he said.

He visited the Channel Islands this month as part of a three-week holiday. ‘I first heard about Guernsey and Jersey at school, and recently my nephew was on holiday in Brittany, so I went to meet him and realised how close I was to the islands, so I sailed over from St Malo.

‘Other than German and English, I struggle to read a paper’s content, but I get a general idea of what is being discussed.

‘It makes you realise how important local papers are to these smaller places.’