I use a normal film camera to do publicity photos for some local charities and send Jessop machine made prints to local newspapers. If I were to switch to digital would the print quality obtained from a 'near photo quality' printer be good enough to be reproduced by newspapers or would the dpi cause any reproduction problems. Many thanks.

It depends how they use the images. As they (presumably) currently scan in your photos, it might be worth asking them what scan resolution they use.
If you send them the original image electronically, it will probably be good enough for newspaper reproduction, and it will also save them some work.