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Jonathan at the Dunes Blog asks which paper is better — the Times or the Post-Tribune?

While both papers are fine, I find myself liking the Post-Tribune a little more than the Times.  It might be because I’ve been a subscriber to that paper for a longer time.  It just seems more familiar to me than does the Times, which I find to be west Lake County - centric.

The Post-Tribune does a great job covering many of the things going on in Lake County that are of interest.   Most of the major political corruption stories that end up shaking things up in the area come from the Post-Tribune.  The sign that the newspaper was doing its job was shown when it was banned from the Gary school system for writing stories about school board not too long ago.

The Times, however, makes up by covering a wide scope of the area from across the Indiana - Illinois border all the way to Valparaiso, so reading both papers is a necessity to keep informed.  They also have nice website features that provide useful information about the area contained in news stories.

Jonathan is on the money when it comes to evaluating the two papers’ websites.  I’m hoping that the Sun-Times media group looks into revamping their news websites to make them more attractive to users.  I see that the Post-Tribune has fixed issues with RSS, so that’s a good start.  A better archive that allows readers to look at older stories without having to pay would be another wish item for the Post-Tribune site.

Jonathan points out one thing that I’m sure others have noticed if they’ve looked at the comments section (or the forums) in the Times:

As for the NWI Times website, if you don’t want to get very angry and lose faith in your fellow man, I would avoid reading the comments to pretty much any story. Most of the people who comment say the stupidest things and many lack decent grammar and spelling skills. It’s actually sad. Avoid the comments at all costs no matter how much you’re tempted.

Aside from the silly comments after the stories, the larger problem with the Times’ forums is that they are dominated by the local political elites, so much that dissent is deleted from the forums by people using local government computers using tools that allow participants to “self-police” the site.

Technorati Tags: local newspapers, Post-Tribune, The Times

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