Gov. Chris Gregoire has approved a tax break for the state’s newspaper industry, The Associated Press reports.

The new law gives newspaper publishers a 40 percent cut in the state’s main business tax. The discounted rate mirrors breaks given in years past to The Boeing Co. and the timber industry.

Newspapers across the country have resorted to layoffs and other cost-cutting moves to deal with a wounded business model and a recession-fueled drop in advertising.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed its final edition earlier this year and was converted to an Internet-only publication with a much-reduced staff.

To celebrate Arbor Day, Earth Day and Parks Appreciation Day, the Sumner Forestry Commission is inviting the public to help plant 28 trees Saturday at the Sumner Cemetery.

The sycamores and blue ash are already in their holes but help is needed to fill the holes and stake them. Bring gloves but tools will be provided.

The cemetery is located at 12324 Valley Ave. E.

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Six inches of spring snow shut down Northwest Trek Wildlife Park in Eatonville Sunday.

The park is expected to reopen Monday, said spokeswoman Sheelah Medved.

The snow that accumulated by Sunday morning prevented the operation of trams at the park, resulting in the closure, Medved said.

• We're looking at the local impact of the Alaskan volcano. For one thing, a number of Alaska Airlines flights have been canceled because of the present of an ash plume in the Anchorage area.

• If you're a Pierce Transit rider, you're going to be noticing some improvements soon. Pierce Transit is installing a $35 million communications system that will give passengers much more information.

• With a budget shortfall of as much as $15 million to deal with, Puyallup School District officials are considering some radical measures to help close the gap.

As mentioned on this blog last month, some of our readers find the Sudoku puzzle that appears daily in SoundLife to be too simple.

We switched puzzle vendors in January from Pappocom to Creators Syndicate, which distributes Janric Classic Sudoku.

Features editor Norma Martin passed the complaint to Creators and recently heard back from them that harder puzzles are on the way. Beginning the week of April 26, the silver and gold puzzles will be made more difficult.

Another complaint we've received is that the size of the Janric Classic Sudoku puzzle is too small. In response to that we've recently had the vendor increase the size. We measure things in picas, which is a printer's unit equal to about one-sixth of an inch. Here's how the current puzzle size stacks up against our previous puzzle from Pappocom and the original version of the Janric puzzle. Our current puzzle is larger than both.

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Seattle's SIFF Cinema movie house has an interesting theme this year for its annual film noir festival: "Newspaper Noir." The series features such titles as "Deadline, U.S.A.," "Scandal Sheet" and "Night Editor," which is described as "One of the raciest and raunchiest 'B' noirs of the forties."

Judging by the movie poster, being night editor is a dark, edgy profession, full of intrigue, guns and blonds. It was probably different back in the 1940s, but based on my experience, the job really isn't that glamorous. The only murder taking place is when I kill out the overflowing e-mail in my in box.

Realistic or not, I love the hard-drinking, fast-talking newsmen and women from the classic film noir and screwball comedies.

We had to change Sudoku vendors recently. Like many of the changes we make in the newspaper, the reception has not been universally positive. Callers to our reader representative the last couple of weeks have complained that the so-called "gold" level puzzle is not hard enough.

Our features editor, Norma Martin, contacted our new vendor this week. The representative for the syndicate was surprised to hear the "too easy" complaint. She said she normally hears that the puzzles are too hard. Anyway, she's going to research the matter and see if the level of difficulty can be addressed.

Some readers expressed concern when we dropped The New York Times news service a few weeks ago.

I wanted to assure you that there are still plenty of sources from which we get news beyond that gathered and presented by our own staff of about 100 journalists.

First there is The Associated Press, which employs 4,000 people in 235 bureaus around the world. It also has access to all the news from the 1,400 US newspapers who are part of the cooperative and from news clients worldwide.

We also subscribe to The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times wire service. These major national papers have large staffs here and in bureaus around the world and give us deep East Coast and West Coast sources.

Then there is the McClatchy Washington Bureau, with a national staff of 23 reporters and editors; seven foreign bureaus (in Baghdad, Beijing, Cairo, Caracas, Jerusalem, Moscow and Nairobi), and 12 regional reporters and editors, including Les Blumenthal, who reports for The News Tribune and the other McClatchy papers in Washington state. McClatchy newspapers also have access to the coverage of the Christian Science Monitor bureaus in Mexico City and New Delhi.

We also receive news from the McClatchy-Tribune News Service, which provides material from the thousands of reporters and columnists at the 30 McClatchy newspapers and nine Tribune Co. newspapers nationwide, plus about 40 other leading news organizations including The Dallas Morning News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Jose Mercury News, MarketWatch, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Orange County Register, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Seattle Times.

We even have a news service that focuses on business news. Bloomberg News covers business and economic news around the world. It covers all of the public companies in Western Washington, including some that no other services cover. The service has more than 2,300 reporters and editors in 135 bureaus around the world.

The same day President Barack Obama ordered a rollback of government secrecy, he also stepped into mess.

On Wednesday, three news agencies refused to distribute photos of President Obama in the Oval Office for the first time. The photos were taken by White House photographer Pete Souza. The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse photographers were not allowed to capture the president at work on his first day in the Oval Office, long considered the president's public office and generally open to some news photography.

Michael Oreskes, managing editor for national news at the Associated Press, was quoted as saying, "We are not distributing what are, in effect, visual press releases." The AP also rejected a photo of Obama re-taking the oath of office that was taken by Souza.

So how did The News Tribune obtain the photo, and why did we use it when other international news agencies refused?

Independent news coverage is very important to editors at The News Tribune. When other photos are not available, we will occasionally use photos from "official sources" such as the White House, Boeing, the NBA, etc.

On Wednesday afternoon, our wire editor Jonathan Nesvig, AME-Visuals David Montesino and I (photo editor) had a conversation about the boycott and whether to use the photo or not. We decided that it was a historic moment, with mood and significance. It's unfortunate that independent news organizations were not able to take photos of the same moment. Without an alternate source, we decided to use the photo to mark the day. The photo was distributed internationally by the McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT), a division of The News Tribune's parent company.

Dozens of newspapers across the country (newseum.org) made the same decision.

On Thursday, the AP, MCT, APF and others photographed the president extensively as he signed an executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.