Opinion Bainbridge Island
Friday, April 25, 2014 • Bainbridge Island Review
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Page A7
In Our Opinion
Changing with the times
T
he Bainbridge Island Review has a long and proud history of providing our readers with complete and comprehensive coverage of life on Bainbridge Island. Next year, we’ll celebrate the 90th birthday of our newspaper. Newspapers today, however, are much more than print on paper. And while many readers continue to faithfully pull our pages from their newspaper tube each week, our online readership at bainbridg ereview.com has been growing rapidly in recent years as more and more islanders, and readers from afar, rely on the internet to access our news. Our most avid online readers will notice something new starting today. We are now asking our readers who enjoy and depend on bainbridgereview.com to pay for the content we produce, just as our print customers have done since 1935. After reading five articles online, readers will receive an invitation to buy an introductory digital subscription to bainbridgereview.com. When readers click on their fifth link to a story, a message will pop up to let readers know they’ve used up their allotment of free articles for the month. The price is modest, just 75 cents a week for full access to the website and all that it offers. For readers who already subscribe to the print edition of the Review, their digital subscription is absolutely free. It was just two years ago that only 10 percent of newspapers in the United States charged for their websites. A year ago, that number doubled to 20 percent. Now, published reports bring that number closer to 30 percent of newspaper sites require digital subscriptions. Among U.S. paid dailies, paywalls and meters are now the norm. A survey by the Reynolds Journalism Institute found that 70 percent of newspapers are using some form of meter or paywall, a large increase from the 41 percent that the institute found in the same survey in 2011. This shift in the newspaper industry toward charging for web content is not surprising. Gathering, verifying and writing news and taking photos takes time and money. From the moment the Review’s website was launched, our print customers have covered much of the cost of reporting the news. The importance of newspapers have not changed. Newspapers connect people with their communities and the events that shape their lives. We inform, educate and entertain, and as readership habits continue to change, newspapers, too, must adapt. Digital subscriptions are the next step in the evolution of newspapers, and will allow your community newspaper to provide the kind of coverage that Bainbridge has come to rely on for so many years.
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Named Washington’s Best Community Newspaper: 1990, 1992, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2004 Bainbridge Island Review (ISSN No. 1053-2889) is published weekly, every Friday by Sound Publishing Inc. Review: 911 Hildebrand Lane, Suite 202, Bainbridge Is., WA 98110. Headquarters: 19351 8th Ave NE, Poulsbo, WA 98370. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $48/year carrier or motor route delivery; $69/year in-state mail delivery, (not available within carrier or motor route delivery area); $95/year out-of-state mail delivery. Periodicals postage paid at Seattle, Washington. POSTMASTER: Send changes of address to Bainbridge Island Review, P.O. Box 10817, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110. Copyright 2014© Sound Publishing Inc.
Letters Thank you
BI Garden Club gives thanks to BHS senior To the editor: Bainbridge Island Garden Club members wish to publicly thank Bainbridge High School senior Ronnie Nigash for designing and maintaining our new website as his senior project. His careful planning and attention to detail has resulted in a fun-to-view site that can help increase awareness of the many services the garden club has to offer the community. We are truly grateful to Ronnie for taking the initiative to tackle this project. His proficiency in computer design is evident, and we wish him luck as he pursues this avenue in college. The website can be found at www.bainbridgeislandgardenclub. org. ROBYN TESKE Bainbridge Island
In response
Waypoint flowers were a team effort To the editor: Some of the Friday Tidy gals were a bit surprised to read a comment in the Review thanking Debbi Lester for planting the daffodils at Waypoint. In fact, the Friday Tidy volunteers, who have taken care of the library gardens for 17 years now, helped me plant 1,000 daffodils last fall. The beautiful bulbs were donated by Dick and Kaye Krutch, whose family has been donating daffodils
to plant in public places for many years (all the ones along Bainbridge roadsides, for instance). The Friday Tidies also helped me plant nearly 6,000 plants at Waypoint, along with the skillful and cheerful Bloedel crew. I myself designed the Waypoint gardens, chose and placed the plants, and had amazing help getting everything into the ground (we added about 400 new plants this spring). A really lovely team effort! We continue to keep the Waypoint looking good by gardening there on the fourth Friday of each month from 1 to 3 p.m. If anybody wants to join us, they are very, very welcome! ANN LOVEJOY Battle Point
Island community makes me proud To the editor: Thank you! There’s much to agree with in Dr. Keyes guest column “Living in a community that values seniors.” On an island where great focus is placed on our children, our schools and our growing families, there is also a very large and vital senior population. Our senior center offers dancing, Spanish language lessons, softball and a catalog full of activities for our aging population. It’s a bustling place. The living communities that Dr. Keyes mentions are wonderfully staffed and managed residences, if you are lucky enough to afford them. All mentioned are private pay options and they are not inexpensive. While they certainly offer a great value for the price, many seniors on this island
cannot afford to live in them. What Dr. Keyes did not mention was another way our island values our seniors – through service. Many service organizations assist seniors in a variety of ways and their services are largely unnoticed. These groups work tirelessly and quietly to help seniors, and those who are in need. They have small budgets and a dedicated staff of volunteers who rarely say “no.” One of the largest providers of services to the senior community on the island is IVC (Island Volunteer Caregivers). They drive, shop and visit a growing number of care receivers. My experience as a volunteer with IVC has been both rewarding and heart-wrenching. I drove a lovely woman to an appointment who told me I was the only person she had seen all week. I met a man with nothing in his refrigerator because his family hadn’t visited for over a month. Many of our seniors spend too much time alone. Some live in large homes which were once alive with activity, now with everyone gone, they’re living in three rooms of an eight-room house. Others live in one of a few rent-subsidized apartments, most of which have waiting lists. The measure of value must include all – those with resources and those without. Service is one of the ways that we can reach everyone and help them remain independent longer and enjoy a good quality of life. I’m proud to live in a community that values and supports ALL of our seniors regardless of their income. JACKIE FABBRI Bainbridge Island