I'll miss Mary as a close friend and as a co-worker. But whenever there's a change like this, there is much to re-evaluate. The editor is the person chiefly responsible for determining the overall content of the paper, the scope and tone of our news coverage and how the newspaper "reads."
We'll be announcing the appointment of a new editor very soon. This person will be tasked with - in addition to getting a paper out every day and keeping registercitizen.com fresh - taking a new look at all aspects of the news that we cover, how we cover it, and how we present it to you.

Changes won't come overnight, and at a small-town daily newspaper with a small staff, you can't just snap your fingers and be everything to everyone. If we could, believe me I'd be down there in the newsroom snapping my fingers. (Sometimes I do anyway.)

The new editor will have to juggle the highest priorities of local news coverage against the amount of people available to do the work. He or she will have to juggle the flow of state, nation and world news against the amount of space available in the paper. He or she will have to determine how much feature content, such as health, food, travel, home and garden, is appropriate based on how valuable we think it will be to readers, how much space is available, and at what point it starts to cut into space or time for presenting basic local news.

As changes occur in other local media, it's going to affect what we do. We're never going to try to be like the New York Times, but we are and seek to improve upon what large, out-of-town media can never be.
That's why we have jumped at the opportunity to add Owen Canfield as a front-page columnist, starting this coming Sunday, Sept. 14. After more than four decades of covering Litchfield County for the Hartford Courant, he was dropped as part of a company-wide cost-cutting and reduction of pages ordered by the corporation that owns the Courant.
And changes in the community, obviously, should also affect what we do. For example, as Torrington continues to emerge as a regional destination point for the arts, its importance needs to be reflected in the pages of the newspaper.
I've got my own ideas for the new editor. For one thing, we need to get back to providing consistent local coverage for the smaller towns around Torrington, Winsted and Litchfield.
But your ideas are the most important for him or her to hear. So please do me a favor ... when you see an article in the paper soon with news about the new editor being appointed, take down their email address or phone number, and give them an earful on what you think is missing from our news coverage, wrong about our news coverage, right about our news coverage, etc.
The first and most important job of our new editor will be to represent you, the reader.
Matt DeRienzo is publisher of The Register Citizen. He can be reached at 860-489-3121, ext. 350, or by email at mderienzo@registercitizen.com.