I’M going to start this column by sneaking in a banned word – local.

The Examiner’s head of content Andy Hirst has kept vigilant watch for many years now for any use of the L-word in this fine newspaper.

No reporter is allowed to get away with using terms like “a local man” or “a local business”. Because, as Andy likes to point out, the term is meaningless as everyone is local to somewhere.

In newspaper reporting, the word “local” is a usurper, taking the place of a more specific term, for example ‘an Almondbury man’ or ‘a Honley business’.

But I’m going to use the L-word today to talk about Local Newspaper Week, the seven days of the year when our industry promotes the many good things we do.

The theme of this year’s Local Newspaper Week is press freedom, an appropriate choice in the post-Leveson world as politicians debate just how tightly to strap the muzzle of censorship around the watchdog’s mouth.

The local press is in the frontline of the daily confrontation between truth and power.

In magistrates’ courts and town halls up and down the country the struggle goes on each day. The urge to censor, to deny access, to obscure what is really being done with our money is never far away.

Sometimes official attempts at ‘news management’ are subtle, like the misleading press release that disguises the true nature of a council decision. On other occasions it’s blatant, like the hired bouncer paid to block people entering a public meeting.

But, whether the obstacle is hidden or in plain sight, it is the job of the local journalist to get round it and bring their readers the truth.

I had the honour of being the Examiner’s local government reporter from 2007 until last year, a role which has now been taken on with gusto by Joanne Douglas.

During my time as council correspondent when Kirklees did something right – like putting on popular events such as Party in the Park or the Festival of Light – I didn’t hesitate to report this good news.

But I wouldn’t be much of a journalist if I didn’t say that the stories that made me most proud were the ones which made the council look bad.

There was the tale of Julie Alderson, brought in by Kirklees to cut costs, who helped herself to £1,000 a month in expenses – right down to billing you and me for the lightbulbs in her flat in Brighouse.

Or there was the story of the Civic Centre wind turbines which brought in just £2,000 in 2008 – a third of what they cost to maintain and repair that year.

And I’ll always remember that Kirklees cycling map that suggested riders should head to such well-known places around Huddersfield as Lintwhite Hunley and Millham .

I also recall the long-running controversies which I covered week after week, sometimes year after year, such as library cuts, nursery closures and the Local Development Framework.

Some of the official documents about these issues ran to hundreds of pages and one meeting about the LDF lasted 13 hours. I was there until the end.

I don’t mention all these examples of my local government reporting to scratch my own back. If it hadn’t have been me on the council beat for those five years, someone else from the Examiner would have been lurking at the back of all those meetings.

They might have been better than me, they might have been worse – but the important thing is that they would have been there.

Who else but your local paper provides this invaluable service of monitoring your council?

Regional TV and radio might pop in for the odd big story, but they have many councils to cover and little time in which to do it.

Citizen journalists? A nice idea in some academic textbook, but I’ll start believing in them the first time I see a blogger sitting at the back of a council meeting diligently taking notes.

Until then, if you want to know the truth about what’s really happening in Kirklees Council there’s only one place to turn – but as an Examiner reader, you probably already knew that.