Area losing lastlocal ‘daily’ paper

You probably didn’t read about it in the Wenatchee World,which I find strange, but that publication will no longer be delivered to theresidents of the north county — at least not by paperboys and papergirls. Toget the newspaper subscribers will have to get their daily through the postoffice and then the news will be more like yester-daily. Not a good sign forour one remaining daily newspaper with at least some coverage of the county.

Perhaps it’s the times, as daily newspapers big and smallseem to be suffering more than most of the community weeklies. Weeklies are notprospering as much they’d like, especially in these tough economic times, butdailies were struggling long before this latest financial crisis.

Of course the signs were all there, many daily newspapersforgot who they were serving. For the smaller markets the papers seemed to losetrack of the importance of community news and not just in the town they calledhome. Yes, we needed a source of national news, but not at the expense of thecommunities the dailies were claiming to serve. In the case of the World wefirst lost our regional Okanogan County edition, then we lost little things likethe scores for some of the less popular high school sports.

It’s understandable that the World, like many other dailynewspapers has had to cut back, but going to by-mail delivery with news freshfrom the day before, just won’t fly with many of the people I’ve spoken withabout it. Many of us found out through the rumor mill and later confirmed byphone as they hadn’t so much as sent a postcard about the upcoming change,which is starting May 1.

You can always subscribe to their Internet site, butstatewide, national and international news is available for free from so manysources on the web I can’t see this as being a better option. I grew up withthe World and I’ll miss having a daily newspaper I can hold in my hand and readwherever I want without being tethered to a computer.

Fortunately for local news you have options. Our readers cancontinue to get their local news right here from the Gazette-Tribune. For youranalog daily news choice, well I’d tell you to pick up the Seattle Times,but word is they aren’t going to be delivering to this area either and the SpokesmanReview, well it disappeared from these parts about a decade or so ago.

I hope the situation is only temporary, but until that timeI’ll get my state, national and international news off the web, but probablynot from the Wenatchee World site.