I found Mr Hamers article interesting, but it brought up spome things I have noticed about the Seattle Times itself:

The Seattle Times remains old-school in many ways. The one that irks me the most is that none of your articles can be commented upon. The article quotes Dan Gilmor - "News is no longer a lecture, but a conversation," - but the Seattle Tiomes doesn't seem to think so. You can't comment on the articles, and even some of the blogs often don't leave space for comments.

You must still write an old-fashioned letter to the editor like this one, have someone sort it out with thousands of others, and whittle it down to the half dozen you will print (without leaving the reader the ability to comment there, either).

I read the Times entirely online, when I read it.

However, I must tell you I'm reading it a lot less these days, and won't subscribe to the print version, and here's why:

1. The Times made all the same mistakes every major metro newspaper made in the run-up to the Iraq War. You allowed your paper to be an instrument of war in a town where a vast majority of your readers were opposed to that very war.

I get the idea you don't understand just how serious a mistake that was to just how many of your readers.

2. You endorsed a single party ticket in the 2006 elections, and it was all GOP for every race. This was after the problems with the GOP were becoming very visible, and again, completely out of step with your readership.

3. You fail to print very important stories, and to follow up on those same stories if you do print one article. As a reader, I have to go to other sources to get the news.

You really don't get this: when you cherry-pick your news, you lose your readers.

We don't want cherry-picked, spun-up, watered down "feelgood and go back to sleep" news.

We want the NEWS as it happens, whatever it is.

When the newspaper becomes a filter, not a conduit, for the news, it stops being useful as an information source.

So those are my concerns.

It's interesting that you devoted a guest column to the new media, because it also highlights the fact that you have been resisting the actual interactivity of the new media.

You have a website, and you have online versions. That is very good, very positive.

But you have capped your reader interaction using old-media devices.

For example, why do I need to still give you my address and phone number or you won't print my letter? That's a pretty obsolete practice.

Why? Why not comments from the readers on the articles themselves? Particularly op-eds, letters to the editor, and the blogs at the very least should all welcome reader interaction. What are you afraid of?