20. April 2009 by pat desmond.

For 13 years the Milton Times has had a Web site.

Our first Web site was a single page with a modicum of information about the company. We left it untouched for about six months until my two children decided to take control of the site and make a few changes.

We have gone through many changes since then. We have designed a Web strategy that encourages people to buy our print product - and our Web site offers information on Milton’s top story each week.

Anyway, Ed Baker, who writes the With the Athletes column has a following of former Milton people who live in at least 15 states.  We took his column off our Web site for a while a year ago. That’s how we discovered his widespread popularity. We knew he has been a key piece of our paper’s popularity - we now know he has nation-wide appeal among people with Milton connections.

And so we are beginning a new way of delivering With the Athletes. We are testing out a service that will send Ed’s column each Thursday to an e-mail address. We are beginning the service with an introductory offer. A subscription will cost $10 for one year.

 Constant Contact, an e-mail subscription service, will help us create the new way of helping people keep up with Milton sports stars.

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20. April 2009 by pat desmond.

Long ago I worked at the Patriot Ledger on what we jokingly called the flashlight team. I had been a beat reporter and a general assignment reporter. For a time I was something called a Saturday city editor.

The Ledger was a very good newspaper in those days and the reporters on the news staff were idealistic and commited to excellence. It was a great joy to work there in the 1960s and 1970s. I left in 1981.

It’s not that the Ledger has deteriorated - it was a financial question.

When I began at the Ledger, it was owned by the Low family.  The family owned the paper for 160 years before it was sold to a publically held corporation.  I didn’t work there at the time of the sale. But I did work there as the operation moved from being a patriarchial culture to being a business that concentrated on the bottom line.

Now there is nothing wrong with an emphasis on keeping a business in the black ink.

But the very first thing that impressed me about the company was that in the 1960s when a long-term reporter named Percy Lane was slowly dying of cancer, he was kept on the payroll. He was paid without working for a full year before he died. The family treated its staff very well.

Of course, a business can only do that when there is enough money.

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