From advanced systems like the Pocono Record s on-line delivery service to the Gettysburg Times archival research, Internet services seem to be capturing more newspaper readers in the state. Ad revenue is coming into the systems with retailers realizing that the way to get the jump on competition is the way they always have, through advertising in their local newspaper, and now through its website. I know what my priority reading will be. Pennsylvania s editors are proving that the Internet is not inevitable for newspapers. The reminiscence of our existence, our marriages, the births of our children, even our deaths as ink on paper are the gateway to the vague mutual existence that we call community.
Statistics are the business of computers, human milestones are the business of newspapers.
That human intervention in technology that we call editors are the touchstones to perspective on the institutions of our times, in the world that begins at our front door. In that creativity and perspective Pennsylvania s newspapers have weathered the storm successfully. Albert Paschall is senior commentator for the Lincoln Institute, a non-profit educational foundation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Calvin-Graham Enterprises 2001. Receipt of distribution is permission to publish as bylined op-ed only.