By Mike Ungersma Centre for Journalism Studies, Cardiff

The new Mail alleges a conspiracy against Rhodri Morgan Western Mail goes compact

That was how my newsagent in Grangetown in Cardiff answered when I asked him what he thought of the new Western Mail 'compact', or tabloid.

The innovation by editor Alan Edmunds and his staff offers more than a more "reader-friendly" size, however.

I spoke to him yesterday, before the new edition hit the streets of Wales.

"We listened to a lot of readers in panels and individually in putting this issue together in a new format, so it has to do with much more than just the dimensions."

Those who watch the world of newspapers know there is also another, un-stated reason: the steady decline in the Western Mail's circulation.

Since I came to Cardiff University in the early 1980s, I have had the chance to get acquainted with every editor of the 'National Newspaper of Wales' - Don Rowlands, John Rees and more recently, Neil Fowler, who Alan Edmunds replaced when Fowler went to Canada.

Don Rowlands edited a Western Mail with a circulation now undreamed of - well over 100,000. Today it's half that or less.

But that slow and seemingly irreversible trend is typical.

The Independent was the first national newspaper to downsize

Local and national newspapers in every country, including the United States where I worked as a journalist for more than 20 years, face the same alarming prospect - readers being slowly drained off by competing leisure activities, including television, our favourite activity that consumes more of our time than any thing else except sleeping.

"Most papers relaunch from a position of weakness - that's why they're relaunching," remarked Piers Morgan when he relaunched the Daily Mirror in the spring of 2002, only to be sacked two years later over the hoax pictures his paper carried of troops of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment supposedly torturing Iraqi prisoners.

Arguably, Alan Edmunds is attempting to resuscitate his ailing patient as well.

Let's all hope it's the right medicine. Why?

Because newspapers are important. Love them. Hate them. Wrap fish in them. Whatever. But realise they are more than just another consumer product, however packaged.

The Western Mail relaunches with a revealing story about a supposed palace conspiracy aimed at First Minister Rhodri Morgan, written by its highly respected chief reporter, Martin Shipton.

Whether the story is accurate and true only time will tell.

But it rather makes my point about the importance of newspapers, what Thomas Jefferson had in mind more than 200 years ago in a letter to President George Washington, his revolutionary colleague: "No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free, no one ever will."