What's up with the Daily Republic posts?

If you've enjoyed this news site for a while, you may have noticed a distinct change in how we display news articles.

Where once we posted the entire article, particularly from our local paper The Daily Republic, we now post only a snippet. You may be wondering: "What happened?"

After a discussion with the paper's Publisher & Editor Bill James, we agreed to limit the amount of article we post for free on our blog, and provide a link directly to the Daily Republic's website if you want to see the entire article

Here's why: The Daily Republic pursues a business model that involves readers subscribing to the paper to access the full news articles, which are proprietary, copywritten products of the newspaper. While many newspapers use a variety of different business models - many involving free access to their content - the Daily Republic has every right to run its business in the way its owners and managers believe is most advantageous.

Here at Suisun City Hall, my job as public information officer is to distribute information about Suisun City as widely, honestly and objectively as possible. While copying news stories is a useful way to accomplish this task, I also want to support a local business as it pursues its business model.

So we have this compromise: I can post the headline, top five paragraphs and, occasionally, the photo from the paper's website if I direct you to the Daily Republic's website for the full story.

The result has been posts that have a little more context and background from me that may, in the end, actually be more interesting for you.