I think more people would subscribe if there was more local coverage. We can get state, national and international news from many other sources. Seems like it would even save TDW money as they could drop their subscriptions to things like the AP. But this doesn't mean they would have to hire a lot more reporters to cover the local beat either. Why not simply encourage people to submit their own reports? Yes, they might need an additional editor to clean up copy and to contact the submitter for clarifications but I would bet this cost would be more than covered by dropping those news service subscriptions.

For example, my MIL is in the DAR which gives out citizenship awards to 6th-grade students based on essays submitted. I would have loved to read about who won with maybe a snippet of their essays.

I know that, currently, TDW will sometimes print reader-submitted photos of local events but they don't push for people to submit. I've gotten a couple things in over the years, mainly for Habitat for Humanity, but they don't always print them and you also have to know that they will consider printing such things. Most people don't know it's an option.

Anyway, that's my solution to tumbling readership.

I think you have something there. Then again, the World is one of the few papers that don't seem to have a policy regarding LTEs. By that, I mean regarding frequency and length. Most papers limit to once monthly, and have a set word limit. With the World, if it is too long for a regular spot, they hold it for a My Turn column. Sometimes we see two letters from the same person on one day. Of course, I would like it if saw more letters from a variety of writers (especially the contrubutors here).

Looks like the DW will no longer be accessible through Timberland Library's online reference section. The last available issue is July 15.

But I really don't want to see local news shared via LTEs. I'd rather see a photo of all the kids who got DAR awards with their names and maybe a snippet from their essay.

Oh, well...probably not gonna happen anyway.

I won't pay.

You're right about news in LTEs, I was thinking of columns, and then neglected to actually type that out. The Daily News in Longview (although a slightly larger paper) runs a monthly section written, photographed, and layed out by high school students. Then, at the end of the school year there are awards.

The Longview paper also has an e-edition subscription for $7.50/month while the print edition is just over $15/month. I've sent an email to TDW to see if they are going to offer such an option. If not, that's whacked.

I think $7.50 is a bit high for online access but at least it's a good savings over print. Hope TDW does something similar.

It seems like we had a student-created page some years back. Or I'm dreaming.

I think thats right. If I'm not mistaken- that Kurt Cobain Memorial Foundation came about as a result of that page in the paper??!

I would I think pay for an access to the on-line paper if it were updated more frequently - with more breaking new's and stuff

One thing I've noticed so far is a good portion of the articles are from the AP. Ok, so I'm exaggerating a bit, 10 Local to 9 AP articles on the sports page. Just seems to me that If I'm paying for access, then I should be getting a larger ratio of content that I can't get elsewhere for free.

Edit; Maybe the sports section is a bad example. I've just been visiting daily and I want to find a reason to subscribe, but having a hard time to so far.

We have been an online subscriber since day one. We used to be able to look at an image of the published paper. Now we get to read some articles but perhaps not all the articles of TDW in the same format as the free version. The server is slow.

We got a call from TDW telling us of their service. My wife politely told them of the problems and mentioned we were not satisfied.

There is no sense paying that much money for that much less product. They have less than a year to straighten it up or we will finally after 37 years be absolutely Daily World-less.

That is sad.