THERE HAS been considerable written lately about the demise of newspapers. The word is that young people don't read them and once the older generation is no longer with us, the medium will be dead.

Clay Shirky who has been in the newspaper business and now maintains a blog on the internet wrote that back in 1993, the Knight- Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry's popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet, a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry's work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.

The problem was not that newspapers did not see the internet coming but they have had a very difficult time dealing with it.

Even before that, television bit into newspaper circulation by bringing an end to the evening newspaper.

Many here locally will recall when the Burlington Free Press was the morning paper and the Barre Times the evening one. You read the former when you got up in the morning - it was on your porch - and then your read the later in the evening when you got back from work while listening to the radio.

A contributor to Money- Blue Book.com commented recently: "Does anybody actually read the newspaper anymore? I'm not talking about CNN.com, NewYorkTimes.com, or Washingtonpost.com - I'm talking about old fashioned plain paper print media. Most people I know who have had any exposure to computers and technology now get the bulk of their written news and entertainment updates from the Internet." The writer was talking about people under 35.

In fact, the writer noted that when he had to clean his parrot's cage, he had to go out to buy a paper for a liner. He didn't have one in the house.

Writing for Slate, Jack Shafer makes the argument that newspapers were actually innovators who jumped on the Internet before anyone realizing its power and reach. Yet despite being early adopters, newspapers still failed.

Mr. Shafer's conclusion is that "newspaper operators saw the opportunity to use the web as a potent weapon but failed to appreciate the extent of its agility. While they stubbornly held onto a soon-to-be obsolete business model, their customers already moved on."

Most of this talk is about the big dailies as well as the not so big dailies including those here in Vermont.

The daily Times Argus has gotten thinner, the width of the paper narrowing to cut paper costs and advertisers apparently fleeing either elsewhere or, in the current recession, not advertising at all.

Last week, the Times started a free weekly known as Extra which will be in the supermarkets with The World and Seven Days.

The small town weekly does fall into a different category because the chief goal of the daily papers is not to cover local news in small towns around the state in any great detail.

Recently, I received a letter from M. Dickie Drysdale, the publisher of the Herald of Randolph who wrote to all of the editors of the weeklies around the area.

In the letter, he said that weeklies "have the opportunity - even the obligation - to work . . . to reverse the the growing perception that newspapers are a dying breed . . ." He went on to say that reading each of the weeklies that he sees, "frankly I don't see any signs of death" but in some cases, "they may be a bit slimmer that they were 18 months ago but still jam packed with good, original content."

Mr. Drysdale believes, as do I, that the story of the basic health of community newspapers needs to be told frequently, consistently and confidently.

To that end, the News recently offered free copies of the paper to the Northfield High School and each week 40 copies of the paper are delivered there to be read and studied in Civics class.

It was our belief that kids need to become aware of local issues and things that are happening in their community. If they start reading when they are in school, we hope that they will continue to read the paper once they leave school and become part of the community and involved in its government and local affairs.

However, at the same time, the local news media needs to move with the times.

For those who either do not want to read the printed page or want to go back and review something and don't have the paper any longer, The Northfield News maintains a web site where anyone can read the paper.

The paper can be read in its entirety and without requiring the reader to have a subscription on

thenorthfieldnews.com. Statistics from our site show that the paper was read on the internet during the month of September, 2009 by an average of 168 people every day who stayed on the site for an average of 3 and one half minutes. In a normal week, about 1,170 people read the paper on line and of those, 334 in that week returned to look at the paper once again after looking at it the first time.

Considering that our print circulation is only about 1,550 papers a week, that is remarkable. The internet pushes our circulation from 1,550 to 2,720.

One of the most often read regular features offered by the News is the weekly PBS program notes which we began offering only at the beginning of this year.

A large number of people go to the site and click through to the sites of our advertisers with considerable frequency to get more detail about the services being offered by them.

Though most readers on the internet enter the paper's web site on the home page, only 3 per cent exit the site from that page, meaning that they read other pages before leaving.

Perhaps the most remarkable statistic of all is that thousands of files from the web site were downloaded during the month of September, 2009. These included photos that were in the paper being downloaded most frequently.

The most readers on the internet were from Northfield and Williamstown with the next largest number from Norwich University.

There is a common perception that community newspapers are different and less likely to be victims of newspaper malaise, said Mr. Drysdale. "We need to strengthen that perception, fortify it with evidence, so that it becomes the dominant perception - in business offices and ad agencies as well as among our most loyal readers," he said.

To this, I say Hooray, Hooray! Mr. Drysdale, you are right on.

Nowhere else but in the Northfield News does any one print the great things that are being done locally at the Boys and Girls Club, the GNCC, in the Star Program, at the American Legion, the Northfield and Williamstown Historical Societies, the local VFW, the churches, the libraries in Northfield, Roxbury and Williamstown, or any of the other myriad of organizations that make our community a vibrant and growing one.

Nowhere else do you learn about the specials offered by local merchants, craftsmen, trade people and professionals. Nowhere else is there such complete coverage of what is happening at Norwich or any of the other schools in Northfield, Roxbury and Williamstown.

The Northfield News has the best sports coverage of both the local schools, Norwich, Dynamo soccer and other things happening in the sports community in the towns covered by the News.

These things are reported and found only in your local weekly paper. It is and remains the best outlet for people to know what is happening in the towns which we cover.

We hope that you enjoy our offering. We certainly look forward to your comments and your letters as to things you'd like to see and don't.