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.

On Monday, we began using a Sudoku puzzle provided by a different vendor. Instead of four levels of difficulty, now there are three. And the new puzzle box is slightly smaller in the paper than the old puzzle.

I got this note from a sharp-eyed reader today:

"I would like to complain about your smaller version of Sudoku. Many of us who work this puzzle are senior citizens and we do not need something smaller. Would you please consider going back to the original size?"

And my answer:

"I’m not yet a senior citizen, but I still think you’re right – our new version of the puzzle is too small.

"I talked today with the page designer who coordinates that page. She plans to contact the company tomorrow that puts all the puzzles on the page for us and ask that they bump up the size.

"Because they work a week or so in advance, it will be several days before we can make the fix. If I find out this is not possible, I’ll let you know.

"Thank you again for making a suggestion that other readers likely will appreciate, as well."

A redesign of thenewstribune.com launches at 2 a.m. Wednesday. The culmination of about nine months of work, the new design offers a better display of homepage and section front items, and introduces the Pluck commenting system.

Our site will be off line for a short period early Wednesday morning as we make the shift.

The new home page will keep a large photo anchored at the top of the page, which we think is an advantage over our current format that stacks breaking news updates at the top, pushing the photo farther downpage all day.

We'll still be breaking news all day long, but beginning tomorrow we'll make it clearer which of the updates are big news and which are lesser news.

Casual readers shouldn't notice a change in the commenting process. Most registered users shouldn't be phased either - their comments will show under each article. Comment threads will not carry over from the old system to the new one.

We're also launching the vMix online video platform and a major revision of the photo galleries, powered by SlideShowPro.

VMix and SlideShowPro facilitate collaborative, high-volume, quick-deployment production environments - important for online breaking news.

There will be a button on our homepage tomorrow which you can click to log comments on the redesign or let us know of any problems you see.

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Update at 2:37 p.m.

The Private Message functionality is not a feature of the *new* Pluck commenting platform. We're lobbying for that feature to be added on future software updates. - Doug Conarroe, AME-online

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A handful of readers have written this week regarding our coverage of the fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza area.

Here’s a portion of one email: “I note your bias toward the Palestinians, whereby you have published several stories about the impact of the Israeli airstrikes but virtually nothing about the impact of the many rockets fired by Hamas from the recently awarded lands that Israel gave up to the Palestinians.”

This story is another one that falls mainly to our wire editors. For the past week, since this last round of violence began, on most days the bulk of the news stories and pictures have been about Israeli bombs dropping on Hamas targets. As of Friday, the United Nations reported more than 400 Gazans killed and four Israelis.

We cannot ignore telling the news as it happens.

But what we can and should do is be sure each of those stories contains the context of why Israel says its striking out against Hamas – because of Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel.

Our stories this week have included that context.

On Tuesday we ran two stories on the conflict, one noting the United Nations’ tally of civilians killed by Israeli bombs and another detailing Hamas rocket attacks and offering a slightly longer look at the conflict.

On Wednesday, we covered the story locally when about two dozen people carried signs in front of the US District Courthouse in Tacoma protesting Israeli strikes. Our reporter also talked to the lone person at the protest defending Israel, and he sought out members of the local Jewish community who did the same.

In a 10- or 12-inch daily story, we are not able to retell the entire history of MidEast violence, but we’ll continue to do our best to provide some context.

I'm not one to ask for trouble, but I have to say I'm surprised at the lack of outrage over our launch this weekend of an online page listing the salaries of employees who work for the state, the county, the city and public schools statewide. We believe taxpayers should have simple access to this information, but we anticipated some pushback.

Our SoundInfo page (www.thenewstribune.com/soundinfo) offers a portal into other existing databases, including those for property values, high school sports scores and area summer camps.

But the salaries are new, and apparently popular. Since Sunday, we’ve had 14,767 page views to the SoundInfo homepage and the salary databases combined. The school employee database is the most popular with 5,576 page views, followed by City of Tacoma at 3,404 page views.

Several other newspapers across the country have posted public salary databases only to be flooded with calls from public employees unhappy about having their salaries revealed.

When the Minneapolis Star Tribune posted salary databases a week ago, editor Nancy Barnes wrote a column explaining why - that taxpayers had a right to know. Among the comments on her column was this one: "I have several friends who are employed by the state who are incensed at this gross invasion of privacy."

As of this posting, our Reader Representative has had no calls about our salary postings. Neither have I. Not one.

We've had only four comments on a similar column by our editor, Dave Zeeck, including this one: "Bravo! Superb idea, TNT."

Hmm. Maybe ours is simply a more enlightened readership. Or maybe public employees are just now finding the site. We'll keep you posted.

Following are notes taken this morning as editors critiqued today's paper:

A1
Tall ships coverage is fun and comprehensive, but we keep learning every day. Tense shifting in Kathleen's blog posts today is a little awkward; starting with the oldest post first not ideal. Could we have just dropped the first post, which seemed dated by this morning? Some transmission problems, too, from the Coast Guard ship. But we love that Kits and Janet are doing this and expect better luck (and more frequent posting) today as they get closer to civilization.

New law roundup worked well as an alternative story form. (That's when we bold-face the first phrase of a paragraph to make the story easier to scan.) The story was tops on the Web this a.m.

Names of swimmers too small in teasers at the top of the page?

Wanted a pix of a lynx, even though a pix of this lynx was not available. (We're talking about the NW Trek animal, not the tall ship of the same name.)

B1
We were generally OK with where Gregoire "bring your governor to work" package landed today. But let's keep asking ourselves about proper play of these campaign stories.

SPORTS
Appreciate playing up the local swimmers at the Olympic trials.

BIZ
Bus driver help-wanted story was appropriate in these troubled economic times. And Russ Carmack only had to walk, like, 500 yards across the street to get the photo.

SL
Pirates were a rip-roaring fun story, with engaging in-your-face photos that are family friendly and appeal to a child's curiosity. (How did "Big Bones" black out his teeth? We use a crumbled Oreo/Super Glue mix in our household.) Some question as to why we didn't make this an A1 teaser.

-- compiled by Matt Misterek, Suburban team leader

If your paper looked like mine this morning, the colors didn't exactly match up, causing the pictures and graphics to have a blurry look.

In fact, the color plates were out of register.

As you probably know, we create color in the paper by laying four layers of ink - red, blue, yellow and black - over one another. Each color is printed with a separate plate.

When we printed today's paper, the plates weren't lined up properly. The problem was the plate "bender," which prepares the flat plates for the rounded cylinders of the press.

Here's the note we received this morning from our production manager, Robin Semegen: "We had a failure on one of our plate benders last night. It was bending plates out of square. It was not noticable till they went to mount plates on the press at starter time. They had to remake 30 to 35 plates causing us to be late. And worse is the fact we are out of register on many of our copies we did produce."

So in addition to having some out of register papers, some may have been delivered late.

Robin tells me the problem has not been completely corrected, but adds: "We will just do a better job of monitoring so we catch it and correct it sooner than we did last night. Should be cleared up by Thursday."

Sorry for the problems. Thanks for your patience.

Especially during election years, readers are on the lookout for slights they perceive in our coverage of political events or issues. The following note came in to our Reader Rep this morning. This week's Reader Rep, Peter Callaghan, responded on our behalf.

From the reader:

"After looking at and reading the major article "Meet the Donors" on your front page on Monday, April 7, 2008, I wonder if you realize that there are three MAJOR contenders for the presidential race this year. On your front page there is a LARGE color photo of a McCain donor, a much smaller color photo of Clinton donor and on page A7 there is a small black and white photo of a Obama donor. A glance at the lay-out tells me that there is obviously no attempt at fair and balanced journalism here. In the future, I will pass up anything written by Niki Sullivan or Ian Demsky and take anything I see in your newspaper with a larger grain of salt.

Peter's response:

"Every time we write a story about candidates for any office we are sensitive to the display of the story. But aside from taking three photos and displaying them in the same size across the page – which we have done several times in the past – we have to decide how best to lay out the story.

"We have printed dozens and dozens of stories about the presidential candidates. Sometimes Obama receives better play, sometimes Clinton, sometimes McCain.

"Earlier this week I received a complaint from a McCain supporter who accused us of bias because we ran a photo of a frowning Republican above a smiling Democrat.

"Those decisions are made by copy editors, photographers and page designers, not the reporters who wrote the story."

A question from the audience: Is the News Tribune liberal or conservative?

David Brewster, editor of Crosscut.com: I admire the balance of The News Tribune. I think it has had a nice sense of a moderate Democratic point of view that is appropriate for Pierce County and refreshingly different from Seattle.

Mike Fancher, editor at large, Seattle Times: They have an editorial page that should have an opinion, but a newside editorial voice that should hold local leaders accountable.

Jack Hart, retired managing editor of The Oregonian: That’s the aim of most newspapers. There are people of all political stripes in any newsroom. Where biases creep in are in the stories not told or the assumptions made that shouldn't be.

From the audience: What comes after the Internet?

Brewster: A convergence of audio, video and the web. Highly personalized forums the web allows you to do. Google and other national outfits competing with local.

Hart: Steve Smith of Spokane said the web is a transitional technology. He has quizzed college students about where they get their news, and the variety of sources is enormous. The market is fragmenting. In the whole history of media, the advent of a new technology has never killed existing media, but every time a new technology comes, the functions of all the different media get shifted around.

That was the question posed tonight at a forum we sponsored downstairs.

Our panelists included: Mike Fancher, editor at large of The Seattle Times; David Brewster, publisher of Crosscut.com; Jack Hart, retired managing editor of The Oregonian, author and writing coach; and Alex Tan from the Washington State University journalism school.

About 80 people attended.

Here are highlights of some questions and answers:

What is news?

Brewster: Something someone has an urgency about telling you. The writer decides what is urgent, and so does the audience.

Fancher: It used to be that news was whatever you read in the newspaper, see on TV and hear on the radio. But that definition has changed with the lessening role of the media as gatekeepers. Now consumers decide what the news is because they can go out and find the information. What’s important is to have it delivered by an independent voice that has standards for credibility and accuracy.

Hart: At its simplest level, news is information that helps you live a better life.

Tan: From the perspective of the audience, it’s information that excites me. In journalism schools, we teach that news is information that can energize the community and help them participate in civic affairs.

How does a newspaper maintain its credibility?

Fancher: Be more open about the ways you operate, the methodology, the standards and ethics you use. We’re going to tell you when we make mistakes.

Brewster: Online journalism is more of a conversation.
The truth-seeking process is cooperative and collaborative.

How do we bring more independent voices into the conversation?

Fancher: Diversify our newsrooms. The more we represent the mix of our communities, the better we can understand them. And solutions-oriented stories – they invite participation.

More thoughts from the forum later.

We got a handful of calls and emails over the weekend from people asking us to write more about how Washington's presidential primaries and caucuses work.

Here's an example:

Hi Karen,
I spent the weekend asking people to vote at their local caucus and here was the overwhelming response:
What's a caucus?
Why is it important?
Why can't I just wait and vote at the primary?
Where would I find my local caucus?
Please consider running a front-page article informing people about the caucus before February 9th, it's critical in giving our state a voice on which nominees will run for the presidency.
Thanks so much!!!

First, I agree that our state's system is confusing. That's why we've run several stories about it, including an A1 story last week explaining how the system works and one on B1 today about the politics behind Washington's complicated system.

Second, it's obvious we need to do more. If this many people have contacted us, the information is still not getting out.

We decided at our news meeting this morning we'll keep running information about the primary/caucus system and how to participate as we run up to the events in our state.

And we appreciate hearing from readers about what they need from us.

Steriods: The Mitchell report on steroid use in Major League Baseball comes out this morning. We'll post a story online as soon as we know the details, including which players are suspected of having used them.

Dog rules: The county has issued proposed stricter rules for monitoring dangerous dogs and held its first public hearing Wednesday night. We'll give you the details and tell you how you can testify.

Japan: Military reporter Mike Gilbert files his first full story from Japan, where Fort Lewis commanders are participating in an exercise with their Japanese counterparts.