Newspapers not dead – not by a long shot

The times they are a-changing – that is for sure.

It used to be that when you were a print journalist, that’s what you did – print news, meaning newspapers. Straying outside the path meant maybe being useful with a camera, or knowing how to work in the dark room.

Those days are well behind us – for individual reporters as well as newspaper outfits.

Today, print journalism is branching into other arenas – and that’s a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. We’re not just the Kent Reporter anymore – we’re the Kent Reporter.com (even our banner has changed.) This means we’re giving you the news from multiple outlets – everywhere from the print paper that materializes in your driveways twice a week, to the Internet, where you can download us onto your computers as well as your Ipods and cell phones.

The interesting thing I’ve run across is that people often will ask if my paper is a dinosaur – nodding sagely that it will someday be no more.

That’s not correct, I’ll tell them. Remember T. Rex? He’s still running around – he just morphed into another mode – the bird, which is everywhere.

So dinosaurs remain with us today – going so far as to grace our dinner plates as a nice helping of Kentucky Fried chicken. They were far too useful – not to mention delicious – to just disappear.

So too is it for newspapers.

As long as people want to know what is going on in their neighborhood, we’ll have reporters gathering that news for them. It’s just the mode of delivery that may evolve over time. That is why the Kent Reporter has its proverbial talons in other forms of media. We’re striving to meet readers’ demand. And there is an unbelievable demand, still. People want to know what’s happening in their neighborhoods and their businesses. They want to know how their town is being affected by bigger issues – like the economy – as well as strictly local issues – like our Kent Events Center.

And nobody can do that better than the local paper.

Do you think the Associated Press or the other national news syndicates ever walk through downtown Kent with a notebook and a camera?

No – but we do that here at the Kent Reporter every week.

No matter how our delivery method may expand and evolve, you can continue to count on getting that local perspective. Here and now. And there’s even more news on our Web site (which is not constrained by space issues as our print edition is.)

So if you want local news every day, stay with us. We’re delivering it consistently to you, along with fun features, video stories, and a bonanza of other bells and whistles.

You can see it for yourself, by flipping through the pages of this paper, or going to www.kentreporter.com.