As of Saturday, 26 April 2008, The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin ceased to exist in its nearly 91-year-old form as an afternoon gazetta in service to Wisconsin's capital city.
And began what may be a first-of-its-kind attempt to reinvent themselves on the Information Stuporbahn in a constantly-updated form. (Know, readers, I am referring to general-circulation daily gazettas; the first daily gazetta to fully transition from print to virtual was the world's longest-running such, Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar [founded 1645]--devoted to commercial and legal notices, understand--which "went digital" @ the start of 2007 after 361 years in print.)
Which the publishers acknowledge was necessary to stay in business, what with afternoon gazettas losing circulation as a general trend over recent years thanks, in most part, to television and the Information Stuporbahn. And The Capital Times was no exception; only some 13,000 took the paper @ the start of the year cf. a peak of some 47,000 copies/day in 1966.
Nonetheless, Wisconsin's Progressive Voice needed to move with the times in the face of overzealous and unhealthy conservative dominance of the Mainstream Media. And what better medium than the Information Stuporbahn to keep The Capital Times going?
Still, though, the whole needs to be worth watching to see if The Capital Times can continue its Progressive agenda online as much as it did on newsprint.
(But then again, The Capital Times will still make appearences in print, howbeit twice weekly as tabloid supplements to the Wisconsin State Journal with additional free circulation in and around Mad City--as in an ur-newsmagazine on Wednesdays and in a "what's on" guide entitled 77 Square on Thursdays; the latter's name alluding to the saw about Wisconsin's capital city being "77 square miles surrounded by reality.")
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