The media are nominally London-centric, yet does the capital really get the coverage it deserves, asks Rosie Millard.

Does London get the media comment it deserves? If you are reading this in Somerset, Edinburgh or, frankly, anywhere outside the capital, I forgive you now for defenestrating this week's NS. I, too, have lain in bed outside the charmed circle that is the M25, groaning at the Today programme when some eager reporter gushingly announces he/she is "in the West End". West End of what? Glasgow? Boston? Hull? To people who don't live in the capital, it seems that the British press is focused squarely on its navel.

Is the coverage appropriate, however? This was the question a hundred or so Londoners were considering over breakfast at the Guildhall in the City. Physically, the media are clearly London-centric, as the address of every national newspaper, radio station and television network testifies.

Yet, as one of the panellists, Jonathan Freedland, who writes for the Guardian and the London Evening Standard, pointed out, the press is nervous about being seen as "too London". It often shuns important stories that appear overtly metropolitan, for fear of ostracising readers - and advertisers - elsewhere in the country. How much better it would be, he suggested, if London could be more like New York, which has four or five local dailies with an editorial focus solely on that city.

There is a national antithesis to London, suggested the minister for London, Jim Fitzpatrick MP. The rest of the country is rather against London issues, London culture and London football clubs. Moreover, Londoners themselves feel rather less than tepid about each other. Guildford-based commuters regard Hackney as more or less akin to Fallujah, said another panellist. Scott Solder, who runs London's commercial talk-radio station LBC, said he never grew up regarding the city as his home. "London was somewhere we went shopping, or to the museums. Home was Barking."

The most upbeat treatment of this city comes from overseas, suggested Jeff McAllister, London bureau chief for Time magazine. "I put 'London' into Nexis and called up the first thousand articles which mentioned London over 15 times. All of them were positive." He read out the headlines. They presented a London of spas, shops and soirées, a city that was "tolerant", "flush", "luxurious", "vibrant" and "ethnically mixed".

The debate concluded that the capital should get media coverage that is more engaged, but also more probing, with editors willing to follow stories such as the Mayor's mandate (an issue often regarded as "too London"), or how the tax wealth that is raised by the city is spent. There is community radio, and internet talk forums, and some valid local journalism. But with a single evening paper that considers itself, not always unfairly, to operate on a national level - not to mention local broadcasters who all too often engage with the parochial - the bespoke media for Europe's greatest city are pretty weedy.

Intriguingly, the broadcasters at the debate seemed to imply that it was the job of the newspapers to open up this coverage. The most fascinating suggestion was left hanging by Jonathan Freedland, who revealed that the Standard was about to lose its monopoly of station news-stands. This opens up a real possibility for a second London newspaper. Is there anybody out there?

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