Web is important companion for print

These days, a deadline is a moving target for reporters and editors.

Web first is now the mantra for us at the Daily Herald and at newspapers across the country. Gone is the luxury of filing a story at the end of the day. A structural shift in how people consume news means a story needs to be filed, with updates, throughout the day.

So when a verdict was rendered in the Brian Dugan case, you first learned it at dailyherald.com. Same was true in the Brown's Chicken case. And when a federal prisoner escaped in the Northwest suburbs, his movements were updated regularly on our Web site all day, long before a story ever appeared in print.

Newspaper readers and non-readers alike are turning to the Web for their news - and newspaper sites are where many of them go. A survey in June showed one-third of all U.S. Internet users visited a newspaper Web site during that month.

That's not to say we don't think about our loyal customers - those who pay to have the newspaper delivered to their homes. They receive a package of content, in a format they're used to, that they can enjoy over a cup of coffee at home, on the train, at their desk. It has all the news and analysis, the late scores, the pictures and graphics, from our team of journalists. And it has the advertising local, regional and national businesses have bought to reach those subscribers.

While the prevailing theory is that newspapers are on the decline, another 2009 national survey showed newspapers still are rated as important in people's lives. In fact, 83 percent of those surveyed said daily newspapers were still relevant. More than half still had print subscriptions.

Whether in print or online, the key to our success in the future is what the Daily Herald has excelled at for decades. It's in providing the relevant, local content that you, the reader and viewer, tell us you want. And it's in providing that content in a form you desire - on the Web, in print, sent to your mobile phone. We must advance technologically, but we also must stick close to home with the stories that matter in our communities, our schools, our neighborhoods.

Sometimes those stories are hard to read. A surge in heroin use among our youth. The existence of the invisible homeless living among us. Or they are uplifting. The co-worker who donated her kidney. The runner who ran across the country to raise money.

And as we end 2009, we revisit the local stories that have made a mark on the communities we cover - the closing of a high school, the opening of another. The successes on the prep sports scene and the neighbors who touched our lives in positive ways.

Through it all, we navigate what gets in the newspaper and what gets on the Web. We decide not only what is worthy of the front page but also what you as readers want now, immediately at your computer, and what we think you'll spend time with on a Sunday morning.

However you choose to consume the news we provide, we know it's a privilege to have you as a customer.

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=347401">Web is important companion for print <span class="date">[12/30/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=347088">The gathering place for public debate <span class="date">[12/29/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=346869">The hard copies of life's memories <span class="date">[12/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=346782">The press in the age of the Internet <span class="date">[12/27/09]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>