Appearing on a two-hour local cable-access television show is pretty daunting. But it's a great way to learn what your newspaper readers in North Georgia want - and don't want.
What I learned was that there is nothing magical about the invisible line that divides Tennessee from Georgia, or Tennessee from Alabama for that matter. It's a state line, not the Berlin Wall.
Caller after caller on UCTV's "Night Talk" program implored me to do away with the North Georgia front page and give them the "Chattanooga paper." Even the show's host, Judy O'Neal, executive producer of the Fort Oglethorpe station, was surprised.
As a result of those calls, and an earlier reader survey, we are strongly considering the elimination of the North Georgia edition. Instead, we want to give you one edition - the best one we can craft - that features the best stories of the day on A1, regardless of the state where they originated.
Our news coverage of North Georgia will not decrease; on the contrary, we plan to beef it up. The best North Georgia stories will go on A1; the rest will be found on the B1 Metro cover or inside the B section. In fact, we plan to do a better job covering our entire region.
Before we eliminate the North Georgia edition, though, we want to hear from more of you. My e-mail address and phone number are at the end of this column.
The callers to UCTV expressed views similar to those of the 116 Lookout Mountain, Ga., readers who responded to a recent circulation survey. By a nearly 2-1 margin, those Georgia readers wanted the Tennessee edition.
What we have come to learn is that many North Georgia residents work in Chattanooga, or grew up here, or have family here.
Going with one strong edition of the newspaper would have many benefits. It would cut our distribution costs because the papers would not have to be segregated by state. Residents of Crossville and other far-flung parts of our Tennessee circulation area would get their papers earlier, because those readers no longer would have to wait for the second edition, the one that serves Tennessee, to be printed.
Let us know what you think.
J. Todd Foster is executive editor of the Times Free Press and can be reached at jtfoster@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6472.