To Our Readers:
Undoubtedly, you’ve noticed the world is changing, especially in the way we access information. The Columbian is changing with it.
It wasn’t that long ago when our community received most of its news from our printed newspaper. We’d send reporters into our community each day, they’d write their stories and the next morning — if you were a paid subscriber — the news would be delivered to your doorstep. Of course, that still happens. But now there’s the Internet.
At first, newspapers were cautious. The Internet was a growing competitor. But quickly — very quickly — we embraced it. Today we still send reporters out into our community. But now they tweet from the scene. And instead of just writing one story for the next day’s print edition, they write a breaking story for our Web page. That story often is updated several times and is accessible from smartphones and tablets. And if you access it with these mobile devices, you get all of this hard work for free, no matter how many times you choose to come to our website.
Now, you might be wondering about this “free” part. How does a business succeed when it gives away its work? You might be trying to think of any business that succeeds by giving its products away for free. Well, in the long run, that business model doesn’t work.
