During the first five years of our existence, we missed no more than two or three daily issues -- total. In the past four months, we've missed one or two issues each week, and often more.

This, for example, is the first update here since Sunday, and the Sunday edition should have been posted last Friday.

There are several reasons for our recent disintegration. I've rehashed them here before. I'm not going to go into them again, except to say that I no longer have time to spend several hours each day writing summaries of news stories.

It's been hard to face that fact, but there it is.

The next question, obviously, is: What happens to TMND?

I've been kicking that question around for months. I've discussed it at length with our contributors. And I've finally reached a decision.

I'm dumping the news summaries.

But we'll continue to publish daily, featuring as many of our current columnists who agree to stay with us, and also as many new columnists as we can attract.

There will still be a great deal of work for me to do in dealing with our contributors and editing the pages. But I'll be free (for the first time in my nearly 30-year career in newspapers) from the immediate pressure of the daily news, and therefore better able to fit this work into my fluctuating personal schedule.

It's coincidental, but it's interesting that this time of increased off-Web responsibility for me has occurred right in the midst of one of the biggest continuing news stories ever -- the attack on New York and Washington, followed by the so-called War on Terrorism.

In the weeks since Sept. 11, the whole business of news coverage has changed remarkably.

Even in the past couple of years, many of the problems I saw when we began The Morrock News Digest six years ago (as the Daily News Current) have been addressed. It is now possible for any Internet user to access up-to-the-minute news summaries, posted almost as soon as a major event happens. You can have them delivered to your email address, you can view them on the Web -- you can even call them up on your cell phone.

The major Web-news services -- the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, etc. -- have been joined by a number of others providing a wide variety of voices, such as Matt Drudge's daily rumorscape and new syndicates like WorldNetDaily.com, available in a broad array of formats, and all free.

That was not the case when we began. What news pages there were on the Web were bloated, unresponsive, and difficult to navigate. They were the stepchildren of print and video, and they suffered from neglect. We filled a need by being fast, brief, and even-handed, and we attracted thousands of readers as a result.

The Sept. 11 attacks have finally brought Web-based news coverage up to speed, I really believe. People have become accustomed to seeking out the latest bulletins via Internet pages; they have also, paradoxically, learned to tune into the Cable TV networks for reports as the news breaks, rather than waiting to hear it from the networks at dinner time.

Not only can we no longer compete with other Web-based news services, there is absolutely no reason for us to do so any more.

All along, however, the real strength of TMND wasn't in our news summaries, but in our columns.

We have developed a crew of top-notch writers and reporters who provide reports from inside China, inside Japan, inside India, inside academe, inside the church, and inside life in the U.S.A. that remain unparalleled anywhere else.

On many occasions I have looked at our latest front page, read the news summaries at the top, and observed sorrowfully that the best stuff -- by far the best -- lay in the columns, not in the news digests.

So.

Very shortly, we will be re-emerging with a slightly new name: The Morrock News Magazine. We'll look about the way we do right now, but the columns and features and opinion pieces will take top place, as they should.

If there's a major breaking news story, we may report it. Otherwise, what you will find here will greatly enhance your appreciation and understanding of the news items that you will find elsewhere on the Web. And I believe you'll continue to check here each day for information and insight you will not find elsewhere.

From the very beginning, I've tried to publish the kind of thing that I would love to read myself. I believe our new direction will turn this Web publication into that sort of experience again, for me and for you, and I'm very excited about it.

So stay with us, please. Check back here. We're about to do something quite different.

-- Calvin Demmon, Editor

Copyright © 1997-2002 The Morrock News Service. All rights reserved.

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