If you’ve been paying attention to the front page these past few weeks, you know this is the last print edition of The Windsor Times for the foreseeable future. This is a decision that has not been made lightly, not should it come as a surprise — our publisher has been warning of the increasingly unstable print business model for several years.
All the pleas and warnings have been met with little more than a shrug, so now the time has come for us to shift the model of how we deliver our local news.
While I got my start in print, at a weekly magazine, my first job as an editor was actually in the digital realm, a website back in the early 2000s. I was laid off following the tech crash that came a few years later, but I was bringing news to the web back when we had to write in the HTML tags ourselves because the programs that would simply let you drag and drop were few and far between.
So I suspect that is why I, despite my middle-aged-ness, am not wearing sackcloth and ashes over this. I am certainly going to miss print, but unlike some of my coworkers, I have worked in the digital space before, and know there are benefits.
Thanks to judicious reading of “Frog and Toad” when we were little, I come from a family of list makers, so whenever a big decision comes before us, we tend to do pro and con lists. I present you such a list now.
What I will miss about print:
1)The actual print. I like the tangible feel as much as the next person.
2) The rhythm of a weekly schedule. For four years now I’ve known what day it is based on where in the publication schedule I found myself. Once COVID-19 hit it was the only thing tethering me to the skin of the earth, so to speak.
3) The inherent “nobility” or “respectability” of print. If your name is in print, it means something. While I don’t necessarily agree with it, that is the truth.
What I won’t miss about print (AKA what is going to be cool about digital):
1) No “Wednesday morning surprises.” It is an ongoing source of pain in the editorial room that public agencies seem to delight in making or publicizing major decisions on Wednesday mornings, making it impossible to put into that week’s print edition and/or rendering something in that print edition immediately obsolete. Now, we can deliver our news in a far more timely manner. And edit on the fly if information changes.
2) The limits of how much news we can report. Limits on how many photos, how many words, how many stories. Print is limited. Digital is not.
3) Accessibility. Anywhere, anytime. Smartphone, tablet, computer. Morning, noon, night. You can find us.
I know, we know, that this is a big transition. That some of you will never be comfortable with it. But you now face a choice. If you want the best local news, we are still here for you. In new and better ways. We all mourn the passage of time and the changes such passage brings. But don’t let our mourning cloud our mind to the bright sunrise coming.
Heather Bailey is the editor of The Windsor Times. You can reach her at [email protected]
