To the editor:
As a longtime advocate of print news and a faithful subscriber to the Houlton Pioneer Times, this letter is a difficult one for me to write. It doesn’t come easy to criticize an institution I’ve admired for years.
To me, a local newspaper is a vital informational tool for a community and does much to define the essence of small town life. Until recently, I thought the Pioneer captured that in spades, truly living up to the motto, “The only newspaper in the world interested in Houlton, Maine.” How I love that slogan!
I’d look forward in eager anticipation for the middle of each week because it wasn’t just Wednesday – it was “Pioneer Day.” I’d covet the latest issue of the HPT, greedily reading it from cover to cover before relinquishing it to anyone else in my family or my colleagues at work. I always learned something new that was going on in the community I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t read the paper. I especially appreciated the columns unique to the Pioneer, like the Community News, the Law Enforcement Logs, the Animal Shelter Updates and the “From Our Files” feature to name a few.
What I liked best about these articles was they were exclusive to the Pioneer and found nowhere else. Quite unlike the recycled ones that seem to be appearing more frequently over the past few months which are either imported from other County publications or have already been run verbatim in the Bangor Daily News, often days or sometimes even weeks earlier.
So it was with great disappointment that I opened the scanty 14-page October 12 issue of the HPT to find that “due to limited editorial space,” the Troop F and Houlton Police Logs had been eliminated. In order to read either of these features, the reader was required to go online.
Call me a fossil, but one of the major reasons I have paid delivery of the newspaper is because I prefer reading from a page, not a screen. I don’t have a smart phone, nor am I interested in being connected to a device electronically. I want my news in a tangible form I can hold in my hands that’s permanently accessible to me regardless of whether or not there’s an available signal or power source and won’t come crashing down due to a virus, glitch or malfunction in the hard drive.
My printed newspaper can be read on the day it comes out and as many times I’d like thereafter. It doesn’t require me to log into a website with a special username or password. Nor does it deny access to same for no discernible reason, which is what happened to me Wednesday morning when I tried to access the Law Enforcement Logs online. How frustrating!
As far as I’m concerned, this type of editorial decision does a real disservice to print readers, particularly those who cannot, will not, or do not have access to a computer. Relegating sections of the HPT to online-only status denies these folks access to the entire issue of the paper they’ve purchased in good faith and for which they’ve paid full price.
I realize the current market is tough for traditional newspapers and acknowledge it must be quite a challenge to stay competitive in this type of business climate. No doubt many of the changes being made have been deemed necessary to keep prices down in order just to stay afloat. I also have absolutely no beef at all with the wonderful and very accommodating local staff of the HPT. How they cheerfully go about doing what they do week after week with their dwindling staff and limited resources is frankly a mystery to me.
I do hope, however, that before any additional alterations of significance are made to the content of the newspaper, that the “powers that be” who will be making those decisions will think long and hard about what makes the HPT unique. I urge them to make every effort to preserve and/or enhance this distinctive spirit rather than continue to diminish it. For ultimately, the future existence of “the only newspaper in the world that’s interested in Houlton, Maine” greatly depends on those of us in the world who are still interested in reading it!
