Our Town goes daily with you in mind

Something new is on Pages 11 and 12 today. A bit of Saturday’s Our Town has spilled into the daily Tracy Press.

We hear from a lot of readers, and few are shy about expressing themselves. Some want more sports coverage; some want less. Some want more state, national, world and business news; some want less. Some want all the news on the Internet; some want none of that.

Readers are a divergent mix here, which is challenging for a newspaper editor. But one thing is certain: When folks move to town, unpack their boxes and settle in, they eventually come to appreciate what we call community news — the happy stuff of Our Town.
That’s why we’re going to put some Our Town into each day’s Tracy Press.

Tuesdays will be school days — or youth, as we’ve called it today. Wednesdays will be local biz, which gives us a chance to run a business profile, a column and some briefs. Thursdays will be reserved for church and religion items. Fridays will be for seniors, with Remember When, Twice Told Tales and news from Lolly Hansen Senior Center.

We might mix those pages up a bit — run Health one day, or Neighborhoods on another. You’ll probably have some other ideas as time goes on.

And we’ll keep Our Town as a separate Saturday section — for the Spotlight, to introduce you to an interesting person in town; for the columnists, who continue to enlighten us; for some color comics, for fun; for engagements, births, weddings and anniversaries; for animals that need rescuing; for Scene & Heard photos; and for Datebook — which will be even beefier, starting this week.

The beauty of Our Town is that it relies on the generosity of volunteers who send us e-mails, drop off notes on napkins, bring us photos, leave phone messages, stop us on the street or meet us for coffee. Sometimes they write full stories — and we give them bylines.

As newspapers face cutbacks, they often cut community news first.
We don’t want to do that.

Thank you for all your support — and for being part of Our Town.

Posted by cmatthews at February 27, 2006 10:07 PM

Well, I have to tell you I do MISS my monday am Tracy Press while on the ACE train.. The ACE train does have wireless access so I could access the Tracy Press via computer, but it's similiar to a really bad dial up experience.. So I guess I'll use the time to catch up on my sleep. Regarding the sports section, I was just getting used to switching the paper around and now you want to change it? Seriously though, it really doesn't matter to me which way it faces as long as you have coverage!
One thing I do wish you would publish is weekly paper that is ads.. In the midwest we had a weekly "Xchanger" paper where all the want ads were in it. It reached out to several towns listing everything from real estate, cars, personals, to livestock, hay and farm equipment. I don't know where everyone is placing their ads today for these items, but it doesn't appear they are using the Press all that much for it. It could be a county wide type of paper and with all the recent acquistions that the Press has made, I would think that you would have the area to pull these into one weekly paper. Keep up the good work!

Posted by: rzellmer at March 9, 2006 03:15 PM