From the In Box to your newspaper box

I’ve written here before about my love for newspapers, and my particular respect for the newspaper culture in the North Country.

We’re blessed with a ridiculously fertile newspaper and magazine culture.

A city with the population of our region would have one good newspaper, if lucky.

We have many, many of them thriving, and each with their local communities’ interests at heart.

This blog regularly excerpts (and provides links) to their work.

We like to think that NCPR’s newsroom is part of that community, helping to tell the story of one of the richest, most fascinating places on earth.

A new and cool way this new-media-old-media circle is being completed is that the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, published in Saranac Lake, has decided to publish some of our In Box columns.

They will appear on a regular basis, the first running this weekend.

Here’s managing editor Peter Crowley’s editorial about the partnership:

Today we begin a new column which will run on this page every Saturday — a weekly selection of Brian Mann’s writings from the In Box, North Country Public Radio’s news blog.

Mr. Mann lives in Saranac Lake, has been an NCPR reporter for 11 years and contributes constantly — usually several times a day — to the In Box on www.ncpr.org.

His thought-provoking writings there are worth publishing, so we asked him if we could be the one to do it.

Plus, most of our local audience wouldn’t otherwise read this blog. He and the NCPR team liked the idea, so here we are.

Since these pieces are not original to this newspaper, we have chosen to call this feature “Forwards from the In Box”; in a newspaper-layout kind of way, we’re clicking the “forward” button to pass these on to you.

And we wouldn’t send you junk mail; these, in particular, are worth sharing.

While Mr. Mann properly keeps his opinions out of his news reporting on the radio, he frees them online — and, by extension, here.

It’s meaty stuff; whether you agree with him or not, he knows what he’s typing about and presents strong, logical, humanistic bases for his arguments.

We hope this feature generates some responses in terms of letters to the editor and Guest Commentaries.

You won’t be able to read or comment on it on our Web site, however.

Rather, if you want to read it online, go to www.ncpr.org; you can join the comment conversation there, too.

We heartily thank Mr. Mann and NCPR for partnering with us in this way.

It’s our pleasure.