Steve Yelvington is in disagreement with Jack Schafer's assertions that newspapers risk "dumbing down" and are "targeting a less-educated audience" when they concentrate on local coverage.

Steve points to a different story: "Smaller and more locally focused newspapers happen to be the only happy story in print journalism these days... The bigger the newspaper, the more it stuffs its columns full of wire news that everyone already knows about in this internetworked world we live in, the more likely it is that the paper's having horrendous circulation troubles."

Supporting Steve's viewpoint are the results of a recent report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press on the relationship between online and traditional news media. The study found that 9 in 10 newspaper readers read for local coverage, whereas only half of online news readers do so for local coverage. The study also found that 40 percent of individuals read the newspaper from the previous day, with 34 percent reading a print-only version, and a scant 2 percent reading online versions only. Web news is seen only as a "supplement to other sources rather than a primary source of news," with quick-update sites like MSNBC, Yahoo, and CNN "dominating the web-news landscape."

News consumption in general has not increased over the past decade, even though people are consulting more and different source for their news. People spend approximately 67 minutes a day reading news (66 minutes a decade ago) from newspapers, TV, radio and the Internet and say they are drawn to the Internet mostly because of its convenience. People still turn to newspapers for in-depth reporting on items they may have discovered reviewing other sources.