Weird, but true. It's Rob Malda's take on how local newspapers should survive and thrive in the digital age, and is worth reading for anyone with an interest in media, journalism, blogging, etc. I truly hope his vision comes to pass. I have to admit, we cancelled our subscription to the local paper awhile back. To cut costs, they fired most of the journalists and columnists, replaced all local journalism with stuff they downloaded off the wires and the web, and laid the whole thing out back in Eastern Canada. It was really odd, paying for and seeing appearing in print articles that I'd read for free weeks ago on the web. I don't need a bad Google News imitation printed out every day and delivered to my doorstep, killing trees and worse yet, cluttering up my recycle bin. Having to pay for it was merely added insult to injury. They gave us a free, "Won't you please come back" subscription recently, and I was merely reminded of why we'd cancelled in the first place.

It's not that I don't have interest in the local community; I do. And a good, local newspaper could be a focus for that community. But hey, I live in the 21st century, I contribute to mailing lists and blogs, I trust Wikipedia more than the NY Times, I wanna participate in that community. Slashdot is easily ten times as good as any of the computer magazines it put out of business, and let me tell you, it's not from the articles, it's the readers. I hope that vision comes to pass, but from what I think I know about how newspaper management thinks about the web, somehow I doubt it. So craigslist will replace Careers, Freecycle will replace the classifieds, and everybody will host their own blogs and wonder why they don't have readers. Such a waste. With a little thought and some editors, the local paper could be so much more.