My home town newspaper

Like newspapers all across the country, my home town newspaper, the Cedar Rapids Gazette, has been restructuring in the effort to survive in this economy as well as in the digital age. People have been laid off. Much content has been moved to the web. The actual paper itself has become more compact both in size and content. I was a bit apprehensive about all this as the changes rolled out, but I have to say that in some ways the Gazette has become a better paper. While coverage of national and international news is worse, local and regional stories have become more in depth. That is a good thing. The Gazette is fundamentally a local and regional newspaper with a readership around 200,000, and I think grabbing readers with stories that affect them is a good strategy.

Now the question becomes whether that strategy will work. I surely hope so. There is nothing like waking up in the morning, putting the coffee on, scanning the headlines while the coffee brews, and then settling in to read the paper from front to back with a fresh brewed cup of coffee at hand. That, folks is my morning ritual. If I had to sit down in front of the computer to get my morning news fix it just wouldn't be the same.

For now good night.