One of the great things about being on vacation is I get caught up on my reading. I especially get to spend a lot more time leafing through newspapers, taking time to read them from the front page to the back page — news, ads and inserts.

I can accomplish this on a blanket at the beach, under the cabana outside of the condo that we rent, or at the local bar or restaurant. With a newspaper, I don’t have to worry about the glare of the Florida sun, a dwindling power supply, or finding a free wi-fi location or hot spot. I don’t have to sip coffee at the local Starbucks to access the news.

While I am part of the generation that grew up with newspapers, radio and TV as prime sources for news, I am a lover of the latest technology and the opportunity that it offers. It’s great to be able to read The Herald on my laptop from my room in Clearwater Beach, and I enjoy the immediacy that the Internet provides.

It wasn’t long ago that I would have copies of The Herald mailed to Florida to keep up with the news in the Mercer County area. I’m curious by nature, and although I’m away on vacation, I like to know what’s going on at home.

On Sundays, I read two newspapers here on the Gulf Coast, the St. Petersburg Times and the rival Tampa Tribune. The Times is the better paper with a storied history, but I like to give the Tribune a whirl once a week as well. If nothing else, they have different crossword puzzles, which plays right into one of my favorite activities.

After my wife returned with the two papers Sunday morning from the nearby vending boxes, one of the first things that caught my eye was a $5 off coupon at one of my favorite steakhouses off the island. I was quick to tuck it away, and realized that even before I started reading my $1 newspaper, it had provided me $5 in return. Not bad.

Since we arrived here on Thursday, I have been thinking about newspapers, and the raging debate about their future when we consider the impact of the various ways that readers can get the news these days. Maybe it’s because when you are away from home, you really can appreciate the portability and convenience of a newspaper’s print edition.

While the latest generations that are growing up with PDAs and other electronic devices are well-versed in the many ways they can get their news, I would like to see them work the Sunday crossword that it took me two hours to finish Sunday morning.

To reduce the debate to one of the speedy and efficient access of digital information versus the tradition and outdated technology of print makes the argument way too simple. Like books and other printed materials, newspapers offer both a convenience in many situations and permanence that the Internet can’t. Online makes sense in some cases, but not all, and it’s great to have the options for both.

For example, it’s that permanence — a written history — that really should be one of the major arguments in the fight against a bill in the state legislature that would free government agencies and others from paying to have public notices printed in newspapers.

Right or wrong, a photo caption, a news story, a public notice, or an ad of any kind published in a daily newspaper is permanent. If wrong, it can be corrected the next day, but the original piece of information and its correction are parts of a permanent history. Decades from publication, they can be found in archives and can serve as a paper trail, if necessary.

The Internet guarantees no such security. If something is wrong when posted, it can be corrected minutes or days later by substitution. Anything published online can be altered — news, ads or photographs — making it easy to eliminate any hint of a paper trail.

Such questionable behavior can’t be accomplished after a newspaper, as in The Herald’s case, prints 20,000 copies that are read by some 50,000 people. We can correct bad information in the next edition, but we can’t hide that it happened.

As newspapers incorporate the abilities of their news-gathering staffs into the functionality of the Internet by posting online versions of stories and by using the talents of citizen reporters and other bloggers, technology offers publishers great opportunity to reach into all parts of the community.

I see the Internet as a complement and supplement to the permanence and credibility of the printed word, but hardly a convenient and reliable substitute for it.



Jim Raykie is the editor of The Herald and his column appears on Monday. His e-mail is jraykie@sharonherald.com