A local newspaper has to stick up for the town or city in which it's based and promote its best interests. Apart from anything else, it makes sound commercial common sense.

A newspaper which is part of a confident, proud community is more likely to remain successful than one which leads a constant chorus of complaints and fails to help that community fight its corner against the outside world.

That doesn't mean that a local newspaper should pretend that its city has no faults. To do that would soon lose it all credibility with its readers.

But it has a duty, while acknowledging the negative, to also present the positive - particularly as far as the wider world is concerned.

That means springing to its defence when it's criticised, as Bradford famously was when American author Bill Bryson came to town a few years ago and devoted a most discouraging chapter of his book Notes from a Small Island to the city.

The message was picked up gleefully by national newspapers and magazines and television companies who were only too delighted to have their prejudices confirmed.

Understandably, this did not best please the people of Bradford. They can rubbish their own city, but for an outsider to do so was regarded as bad form.

The T&A offered them a platform on which to express their sense of outrage. And the newspaper, too, voiced its disapproval of Bryson's savage assessment of Bradford.

Such was the strength of opinion conveyed via the T&A's pages that it reached Bryson and five years later, when The South Bank Show was putting together a programme about his work, he decided to revisit Bradford and reassess the place in a more favourable light.

The campaign by Bradford people funnelled through the pages of the T&A had scored a victory.

Daily Mail columnist Lynda Lee Potter also put Bradford down after a visit here in 1999.

She described Bradford as a "vile and nasty place". That was too much even for self-critical Bradfordians to swallow.

Once again the T&A successfully orchestrated the chorus of disapproval. A month later, when the columnist returned to the area, our reporter discovered that she'd had a rethink. She told him that she loved Bradford really, but she thought the litter was horrendous.

"I was not knocking Bradford people," she said. "I think they're fantastic. I was just really upset at the state of it."

Another success for Bradfordians and their local newspaper.

But there are some things which cause damage far worse than criticism by visiting writers.

The image of Bradford education has been badly undermined over recent years, so much so that it seemed in danger of affecting prospects of attracting employers.

The T&A has worked long and hard to counter this, campaigning for the return to the two-tier system and championing initiatives to help local youngsters achieve their considerable potential.

The reputation of the city is greatly harmed when, from time to time, disorder and violence erupt on the streets.

After a spate of what were apparently gangland shootings, the city seemed in danger of earning a reputation as a sort of Yorkshire Dodge City. The T&A launched a Stamp Out Gun Violence campaign to counter that disturbing trend.

The Manningham riots and the more recent disturbances in Lidget Green earned Bradford the worst sort of national headlines.

At those times, the T&A needs to keep a cool head. National newspapers can send in their reporters to cast an outsider's eye over events and write alarmist accounts of a city on the verge of civil war. By the time they're published, the writers are safely back in their London offices.

We, though, live here. Local newspapers and their staff are an integral part of the communities they represent.

We have an important role to play in helping Bradford to face and tackle its internal realities while maintaining a proud and defiant grin on the face it presents to the world.