The bad news is I have been frustrated with our local media (The Bainbridge Review, the Kitsap Sun, the Bainbridge Islander, BIB) for quite a while. I think the City website is abysmal and our elected officials totally fail in responding to our needs to be informed about what's happening to our community under their watch.
The good news is the Buzz exists and several other local blogs: they represent the new media (as Voice of Bainbridge did when it pioneered internet based radio) and they provide us with a slice of much more relevant information in a modern style that allows our instant feedback :)
I wish our old dead tree based media would understand the blog revolution and adopt their key components. First they could assign blogs to all their reporters and staff. That would allow them much more flexibility in their reporting. I read there is a new editor at the Bainbridge Islander (Seth Preston?) and a new copy editor (Jim Thomsen?): I don't think they were introduced to us.
Aha! after googling Jim Thomsen I see he wrote an article about blogs on Bainbridge. Maybe there is hope?
Anyway. Give Rachel Pritchett a blog so she is not constrained within the once a week format that leaves her and the whole paper constantly behind! Rachel: ask for a blog, start one!
Give real blogs to your/our columnists (including archives of all their past articles duly indexed) and PLEEZ, quit polluting the screen with intrusive and irrelevant ads!
Look at the Buzz: their ads are local and nicely designed. Don't you realize intrusive ads are totally counterproductive? OK. I am going to email to your advertisers to complain about the way their ads pollute the articles :)
As for the Review (of course that goes also for the Sun), provide open comments to all your articles so the conversation can really begin and we do not depend on your picking one or ten letters to the editor (among how many) at your exclusive whim.
Letters to the editors are passé, old, rusty stuff. Keep a few if you want for your deadtree products and open your internet site to comments by your readers. Are you afraid of what you would get?
How come so many other newspapers are doing it and you keep us silent?
That was for the papers.
As for City Hall, I'll repeat once again my mantra: blogs for all. One blog for each official, one blog for each commission and one (very important) for all the projects received by the planning department.
This was our free consulting about new media. :)
PS: looking for an illustration I visited Julie's blog and picked a flower. I also recommend the posting about Bill Gates and the barbers (and the accompanying comments).