"The report of my death was an exaggeration."

Those words were written by Mark Twain in 1897, but I know the feeling. For a long time now pundits, wags, critics and those supposedly in the know have been predicting the eminent demise of the newspaper. Done in by the internet and electronic media, finito, RIP.
Well, we’re still here, but the industry is changing and that includes the way people get, or want to get, their news. The printed word is becoming more and more irrelevant as younger and more tech savy readers turn to websites and blogs for information.
And why shouldn't they? Yes the internet is full of rumor, innuendo, conspiracy theories and sometimes outright lies. But for every nut job with an ax to grind, there is also a talented and insightful reporter. You just had to do a little digging but even that is becoming easier. All the major news networks, newspapers, magazines, etc have site with the latest breaking news. It's a simple matter of quick search and readers have a list of news and opinion outlets. Thousands of them. Some objective, some with with a point of view, some have both. It's news when you want it, where you want it. News as it happens, and no matter how many press runs you have, that's hard to compete with.
But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to try.
Over the next few months the News Telegraph will be making some changes in way we use our website and how it will tie into, and compliment the newspaper. My goal is to use the website, along with slide shows, videos and yes blogs such as this one to provide the complete coverage, with context, and background that our readers demand.
There will be lot of news ideas coming down the road, some of them you may have already noticed, and there will be more. I’m kind of learning this as we go, so it won't happen all at once, and I suppose there will be some things that don't work out. That's ok. We'll just keep trying.
In the end I want to put out a product that we both can be proud of. It is, after all, your newspaper to.
Last week I attended the annual Iowa Newspaper Association convention in Des Moines. At one of the workshops a speaker made the comment that the pubic doesn't HAVE to read our newspaper, they don't HAVE to look at our pictures or our website or the ads in both.
It's our job to make them WANT to.
That seems about right to me. So if there is something you want to know about Atlantic, and you can't find it on the website or in the paper, let me know. Call me, email me or send a letter, I'll see what we can do.
Change is sometimes scary, but it can also be exciting, and I have to say I’m excited to see where this goes, it really does seem like the possibilities are almost limitless.
Stick with us, it’ll be fun.