I get asked all the time about where I think the newspaper industry is going, and if I feel the Internet has doomed the print version to the dustbin of history.
The answers are, I'm not really sure, and absolutely not.
Look, the Internet is not going away, so we've embraced it.
If you haven't noticed, it comes in pretty handy, especially in terms of delivering breaking news.
Take yesterday, for example.
We had two big, breaking stories that happened in the early-morning hours.
We were chasing the details on two tragic incidents, a fatal fire that took the life of a resident at Elwyn, and an accident that claimed the life of a man working in a bucket truck in Upper Chichester.
You'll find both those stories in our print edition today.
But we first delivered that information almost 24 hours ago on our website, DelcoTimes.com.
The fact is that we print the print edition of the Daily Times just around midnight, and deliver it in the early-morning hours. The news does not magically stop when our presses stop rolling. In fact, a lot of breaking news occurs in those late evening and early morning hours. That's too late for print, but we publish information 24 hours a day online.
Yesterday morning I quickly pushed out the initial information on both the fire and accident via Twitter, posting them on our Facebook account, and on our website. I got photos from a stringer and added them to the site.
When our reporter got in, we developed more details and updated the story online.
And then we presented all that information in print today.
I hear every day from a lot of loyal, longtime readers who tell me they don't own a computer and have no plans to get one. They love their print edition. By the way, many of them also have strong feelings about our new redesign.
Almost all of our "senior" readers are convinced we reduced the size of the type.
That's a column for another day.
For now, I want people to know they can depend on the Daily Times and DelcoTimes.com for the latest information on what is happening here in the county 24 hours a day.
The old news cycle of delivering news to readers once a day in print is gone. And I don't think it's coming back. Readers have spoken. They've told us they want news when they want and on the platform they prefer, be it a laptop, tablet or on their phone.
That is our challenge.
It's a new world. And we will continue to report on it.
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