[August 12, 2011] Editor's Notes: Changes Coming for Consumers of The Chronicle Tweet Aug 12, 2011 (The Chronicle - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- When I broke into the newspaper industry back in the 1980s the main task was hitting a single, daily deadline. That paper, a daily, didn't have the capability to print in color. We didn't have cell phones. No Internet. No Google searches. We printed out copies of stories and photos on thick paper stock, put a coat of sticky wax on the back and with a slicing pen, cut it up and pasted onto a big sheet of paper. We then took a negative of the sheet, and walked it back to the printer. We did have plenty of Mac computers, lots of notepads and pens, a police scanner and a pot of hot, black coffee always on the burner. Change has swept through my chosen career. I can't imagine putting out a paper today without digital cameras, cell phones, the Internet, digitized layout -- the list goes on. Heck, we didn't have a website when I first started, didn't even know it was coming. The pace of change, if anything, is increasing. The Chronicle is keeping up. We have spent the past several months working toward an upgraded, vastly expanded chronline.com. Our aim is to make it the place to go for all of your community's information, from school lunches to church news to the best photograph grandma just took of her cherished grandson. We aim to load it up with website links that matter to your life. Want to find out who is in jail? Easy. Go to chronline.com. You'll find it neatly tucked into a crime section. Want to see all the webcams in our area? We'll have them. The categories will be extensive and encompass all aspects of life here in Southwest Washington. It is going to take loads of work, but we're committed to making it simple and direct to find all the news you can use. Another parallel project is streamlining our output to social media such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as to tablets such as the iPad and smartphones (when we send an edited story to the design desk, it will automatically go to our website, our new app and social media outlets). We'll be putting up content as it happens, not waiting for the print cycle. One truism in today's new media age is people want their information immediately. We'll deliver. To that end, we're building an app that will make it a pleasure to read our digitized content, be it on your home or work computer, but specifically on a tablet or smartphone. We will continue to pursue our core commitment: writing stories that are important to you, be it a feature on a local character to an examination of how your tax dollars are being spent. We won't backtrack on what we already do best: local news, be it hard news, sports or features. Michael Wagar is executive editor of The Chronicle. He can be reached at (360) 807-8224 and [email protected]. To see more of The Chronicle or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.chronline.com/. Copyright (c) 2011, The Chronicle, Centralia, Wash. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]