A New Year's resolution

It's a new year, leaving in the past a year that many would as soon forget as not. With the beginning of 2010 (twenty-ten? Two-thousand ten? 'Ten?), a lot of us have made resolutions, promises to ourselves to stop saying and doing the things we've always said and done.

My resolution, however, has nothing to do with personal goals. It is this: I resolve to help bring you a better Watertown Daily Times every day. My only dilemma is how to deliver on that promise.

I am at a loss to say, for example, what it is that is driving our readership (and, in fact, the readership of almost every newspaper in this country) downward. I don't know what it is that has made the Watertown Daily Times more marginal in the eyes of north country residents.

I don't think it's our effort to bring you the news. As city editor, my job is to oversee the daily local news report every day, editing all the local stories and finding a spot for them within the paper, and to oversee the wire editor, who selects and places news of the state, nation and world. If I were to do a year-end review, here's what I'd see:

The local report has seldom been stronger. We routinely present in excess of 30 local news stories a day, including those that go on page A1 and those presented in Currents. You'd be hard pressed to show me any daily newspaper of this size, or even much larger, that can match that. All of these stories are more comprehensive, with more facts, than the same stories presented on radio or television.

Likewise the wire section, where the most important stories of the day from the state, nation and world will be found, is more complete than almost any daily paper of our size, and much larger.

So what am I missing? Are you no longer picking up the paper because you don't think we have any news? Are you passing us by on the news rack because our cover just isn't that interesting? Are the stories too centered on government and not focused enough on people? Too many stories on sewer district #4 and not enough on that really interesting guy down the street that has a great story to tell or be told? I have considered all these things, and more, but I can't come up with an answer.

So to have even a remote chance of accomplishing my New Year's resolution, I need your help. Below this blog is a link to leave a comment. If you're bashful, under that all-too-jolly picture of the Santa look-alike is a link to send me an e-mail. Please avail yourself of this opportunity to let me know just what it is about the Times that makes you not so into us anymore. Just try to keep the language fit for a family audience. I'll respond to all the e-mails, and at some point I'll follow this up with a response to the comments.

It's your turn. Let me know what ails us. Help me make the Times better meet your needs.