For all the news that’s fit to print, just wait a couple of days

So our local newspaper, which used to be just “bad,” has now zoomed past bad and right into the “ridiculous” category.

A few days ago, the Times West Virginian announced that from now on, the paper edition would be printed in Beckley, West Virginia, which is two and a half hours away on a clear, dry day and shipped back to Fairmont for later delivery. It seems the printing equipment in Fairmont is too old to function properly and too expensive to replace.

I’m guessing that the good folks at the Beckley Register-Herald – our “sister paper” – will be printing their own paper first, so not only will the TWV be printed in extreme southern West Virginia but it will also be standing in line to use the press, sort of like when concert goers queue up to use the rest rooms in a packed auditorium.

So why does it matter where the paper is printed?

It matters because now, any event that happens much after dark will occur too late to appear in the next day's edition, owing to the time required to drive the paper copies back here from the tail end of the state and prepare them for delivery.

Case in point: Last night’s Fairmont Senior High School football game – which ended at around 9:30 or so – is covered in today’s edition by a photograph and caption…but there is no story. A teaser headline tells me to log on to the web site to read an electronic version and “be sure to buy our Sunday paper” for a full report.

So I have to wait until Sunday to read about a football game that was over before 10 p.m. on a Friday. And by the way, I was already logged on to the web site when I received this information, so I looked for the “electronic version” of the story and, you guessed it, it wasn’t there.

What’s more, there is a story in today’s paper about the most recent Fairmont State football game. The problem here? That game was played on Thursday. So now I’m supposed to read Thursday’s news on Saturday and Friday’s news on Sunday. Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?

Look, I’m not stupid. I used to work for newspapers. Four different ones, in fact. I know they’re in trouble these days with the rise of electronic media and are doing what is necessary to cut costs. Hell, I even quit receiving the paper versions of local papers years ago because I didn’t want to trudge out to my driveway in the heat, rain and snow to collected them off the ground when I could click here and click there and read them on my computer, my Kindle, my iPad and my phone.

I also subscribe to electronic editions of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Morgantown Dominion Post, NPR, MSNBC, CNN, ESPN and I don’t know how many other online sources of news, weather and sports, but until this week, at least I got yesterday’s local news today, not yesterday’s news in a couple of days when the truck gets back from Beckley.

I pay good money for my e-paper subscriptions and I’d continue to do so gladly, but not if my local daily paper is going to be this far behind. In the truest sense of the words, “old news” is an oxymoron because if it’s old, it’s no longer news.

If the Times West Virginian insists on printing a paper copy of its news stories, photos and ads, maybe it should drop the pretense of being a daily newspaper and just start publishing once a week. At least then you’d expect to see “old news” and you could either read it, use it to ignite the logs in your fireplace or chuck it in the nearest bin.