David Trinko: Your news is worth fighting for

There are currently more letters to the editor than there is space for publication.

Every week, our news reporters cover more news than there is inch space to cover on paper.

The same goes for our sports reporters who still watch our youth play various sports almost every night of the week, with all of those game stories featured on LimaOhio.com.

So you'll have to forgive me if I get a little angry when someone tries to tell me that the local newspaper is dead.

“The report of my death was an exaggeration,” Mark Twain wrote to a newspaper reporter in 1897, but it seems just as true today.

Next week marks the 84th National Newspaper Week, an opportunity to reflect on the role of local journalism in our lives when it comes to news, sports and opinion.

Each of us can think what we think about the major national news sources.

Good local journalists, on the other hand, bring you something that no one else can. You are curious and willing to challenge the status quo. They bring a local perspective and local experiences to local problems.

To be honest, we're not always particularly welcome at a party. Part of it is our calling: to tell people things they don't always want to hear. Part of this is the side effect of ink coursing through your veins and your personality becoming introspective and snarky. The industry attracts more than its share of introverts.

However, we don't do the work to make friends. We do it because we are obsessed with finding out the truth. In this ever-changing world, that might mean discovering what we thought was the truth yesterday but wasn't.

I'm reminded of a quote from founding father Thomas Jefferson, who, to be honest, wasn't a big fan of newspapers. (He once wrote, “Truth itself becomes suspect when put into this polluted vehicle.”)

Still, he wrote, “If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I would not hesitate for a moment and prefer the latter.”

The good news is that we are not at that crossroads today.

I know many readers were frustrated by the decision to move from seven-day delivery of a print newspaper to two-day delivery in May 2023. Perhaps we have not expressed clearly enough how the rising costs of printing and delivery have stifled our ability to thrive. Perhaps we didn't make it clear enough that most readers switched to online consumption 10 years ago.

We all hate change, especially changes in our daily habits. I respect that, and honestly I'm a little flattered that we're so important to people's lives that they get so angry.

Fortunately, we have stabilized economically. We're on solid ground now that we need subscriptions to read more than a handful of stories a month online. The most common complaint about us online is that you can't read our stories for free. We publish an average of more than 30 stories per day on LimaOhio.com.

We made difficult but necessary decisions and focused our efforts on good local journalism.

They really seem to care. Literally a backup copy of the letters to the editor must be included. After printing an average of 14 letters per month through September, we have already printed 10 in October, with more already ready for next Wednesday's issue.

We can see from online trends how important it is that we continue the important but admittedly mundane work of compiling and sharing public records, with thousands of you reading them online every week.

Our employees learn how to improve their work by first focusing on the Internet. Our sports game stories are almost twice as long and detailed as anything we could have printed in the past. I know that when I cover a game every week, I'm lucky to have the time and space to talk to a few players, and I'm still stubbornly trying to get it online before 11 p.m

Has journalism changed in recent years? Absolutely. Everything in life has. Most importantly, we continue to work on your behalf, sharing local news, sports and opinions.

David Trinko is editor of The Lima News. You can reach him at 567-242-0467 or by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @Lima_Trinko.