Dear readers,

I’m a fan of the Star Trek franchise, grew up watching the original series in reruns and learned from USS Enterprise Chief Engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott that we cannot change the laws of physics.

That goes for producing a newspaper as much as operating a star ship. Our crew is only so many, we have only so many hours of available in a day for working, and when it comes to printing the newspaper there is only so much space on the page.

That’s an issue we run into often.

We are combining reports and features from six newspapers on the pages of the East Oregonian, and there just is not room for all of it. So we try to showcase our best or most important work each week in print. Sometimes that means a story that we want to have in print in a given week does not make it.

We might be able to add a couple of pages — you cannot add just one page to a newspaper, those laws of physics again — but that means additional costs of designing and editing more pages, plus more paper, ink, time at the press and so on. The laws of responsible finances also play a role.

But we do have content that maybe we should question keeping. We run a weather graphic that takes up half of the last page of the Outdoors & Rec section. Is that the best use of that space? I bet more people look at their phones for weather information now than at a newspaper.

What about the puzzles we run? Dear Abby? The page of comics? Are those the best uses of that geography?

I’m not advocating we nix these features, but we need to examine if this is the best use of the print space we have. To that end, I’d encourage you, dear reader, to let us know what you think. Is Dear Abby so valuable that it should stay, or would you prefer to read a local columnists in that space, or example? Are the puzzles worth keeping in lieu of more community briefs?

Seriously, let us know what you think. If we can improve what we do, in print or online, we will.

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As always, if you have comments or questions about the East Oregonian, or want to pass along a story idea, send an email at this address: editor@eastoregonian.com.

And of course thank you to East Oregonian’s subscribers: We simply would be unable to do this vital work without your support.

Phil Wright is the managing editor of the East Oregonian.