I had the pleasure of spending the day manning our booth at the Tri-State Chamber of Commerce annual festival in Falls Village today.
We gave out several hundred copies of the Sunday Register Citizen, and I was struck in talking to people by the opportunity that we have on Sundays.
Many in the Northwest Corner, I am guessing, gave up on the Sunday paper a long time ago. Except for the comics and department store inserts and coupons, it had no more - sometimes less - than your average weekday edition.
Over the summer, though, we greatly expanded local news content. We also expanded space for features, opinion and world and nation news.
We added legendary Litchfield County author and journalist Owen Canfield as a featured Sunday columnist.
We reintroduced our weekly "A Life Remembered" feature and added another people feature and local business and history spotlights and even local crosswords and word searches.
And last month, we were pleased to add former Hartford Courant business editor George Gombossy's weekly consumer advocate column.
PLUS ... Every Sunday we run a roundup of news items from every single one of Litchfield County's 26 towns.
If you gave up a while ago on the Sunday Register Citizen, it's worth some reacquaintance.

The bad news?
Connecticut's per capita personal income dropped by 3.3 percent from 2008 to 2009. That was among the worst 10 declines state-by-state, and exceeded the national average drop of 2.6 percent.
The reality that we pass over in dwelling on Connecticut's problems?
We are still the wealthiest state in the nation, by a significant margin, $54,397 per capita, compared to #2 New Jersey's $50,313, and a whole-different-world margin above poorest-state Mississippi's $30,103.
CLICK HERE to see a state-by-state breakdown compiled by the Wall Street Journal.

Connecticut's 8.2 percent unemployment rate was better than the national average of 9.3 percent, and far better than Michigan, which was hammered by auto industry woes and came in at 13.6 percent.

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We are planning a major redesign and improvement of our Web site, www.LitchfieldCountyMom.Com, to coincide in May with the conversion of our quarterly Litchfield County Mom magazine to an all-color, all-glossy format.

What kind of information and interactive tools would you like to see on this site?

Please send your thoughts to Jenny Golfin at jgolfin@registercitizen.com, or call her at 860-489-3121, ext. 357.

How do you say thanks for a lifetime of community service?

Many people were kind and helpful to me when I returned to Torrington two years ago to become interim — and then “permanent” — publisher of The Register Citizen. But two people stood out in a “went-out-of-their-way-to-be-helpful” kind of way.

I will have more about this in my column on Wednesday, but in case you missed it, longtime Northwest Connecticut United Way Executive Director Bill Egan is retiring next month.

Bill was one of the most welcoming people to me when I returned to Torrington two years ago, and has been a wonderful partner with The Register Citizen in projects such as Warm the Children and the Northwest Connecticut Diaper Drive.

He has done so much for so many people in need over the past two decades in Northwest Connecticut. He will be missed.

I am pleased to announce that Rob Pazdziorko has rejoined The Register Citizen and Foothills Media Group as advertising director.

I worked with Rob briefly while I was briefly editor of The Register Citizen back at the start of 2004. He moved on to become general manager of the Step Saver in Southington, but never left Torrington, where had been involved in Rotary and with the Northwest Connecticut Chamber of Commerce.

He brings an incredible amount of knowledge about marketing and advertising to our growing operation, and an optimistic, positive attitude that is refreshing.

Readers aren't afraid of strong opinions on the op-ed page

Any manager of a local business will tell you that when a customer feels strongly enough about your product or service that they take time out of their day to call you and offer an opinion about it, you should take it seriously. And if you get multiple customers going out of their way and saying the same thing, it means that many others probably feel the same way.

Readers jump in to shape the news

I’ve always been a “thinking out loud” kind of guy. So the light bulb turns on most often when I am talking to a reader, advertiser, community leader or member of my staff. There were several moments like that as I had the pleasure last night of appearing on “City Views,” the local access call-in program on Cablevision’s Channel 5 that Tim Driscoll has been hosting for 22 years now.

I've been getting phone calls and emails all day from readers about THIS COLUMN asking whether we should shake up our lineup of op-ed columnists.

Causing a particular stir is the suggestion by some readers that we dump Michelle Malkin.

Well, so far today the feedback has run about 11 for keeping Malkin and 3 for replacing her with a "more reasonable" conservative columnist.

Let us know what you think!

I will be a guest on the "City Views" call-in program on Cablevision Channel 5 tomorrow evening.

Hosted by former Torrington mayoral candidates Tim Driscoll and Sam Slaiby, the show will be on the air from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.

The call-in number is 860-361-9985.

Anything goes in terms of the discussion, as far as I know, so it should be fun.

I'm sure the issue of "Sound Off" and Web site comments will come up. I'm eager to see what else does!

Some poked fun of us a bit today for this story about Torrington Mayor Ryan Bingham asking his girlfriend to marry him.

No longer orbiting around the print edition of The Register Citizen, we report news when we get it, across multiple digital platforms, including our Web site, and via email alerts (sign up on the registercitizen.com home page), Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The Bingham story showed up as "Breaking News" on our home page, just as a fatal car accident in Barkhamsted did earlier this morning and former Torrington High School standout Jordan Williams winning an ACC championship with Maryland in his first year of college basketball did a few hours after the Bingham story.

For those who think we should be this aloof arbiter of what is "important" enough to be breaking news, I've got to say, there have been more comments from readers on our Web site, on Facebook and Twitter congratulating Ryan and commenting on his wedding plans than anything else we've done today.

Why can't community journalism be personal? Shouldn't it be?

Today we are asking readers what they think about our lineup of opinion page columnists.

CLICK HERE to read some of the comments and offer yours.

The conversation was sparked in part by some readers' call for us to replace Michelle Malkin with a conservative columnist who is "more reasonable."

The value of transparency, from public schools to the news business
Transparency.
It sure is refreshing to see Torrington’s new school superintendent, Christopher Leone, use this principle to guide him as he aims to transform an institution mired in recent years by exclusion, isolation, finger-pointing and missteps.

At lunch today with several folks who have a pretty good pulse on the business community in Northwest Connecticut, the consensus was that there are definite signs of a pickup in the local economy.
Job creation will have to precede any significant rebound in real estate and other areas, they said, and several local manufacturers have started hiring again.
One sign of an impending or in-progress recovery is that local temp agencies have started to get busy again. That could mean that employers are easing back into job creation, with the next step being addition of permanent staff jobs.
At The Register Citizen, we have seen an encouraging uptick in help wanted advertising.
You can follow the latest job openings in Northwest Connecticut at http://jobs.registercitizen.com or follow them as they are posted on Twitter at www.twitter.com/northwestCTjobs.

How newspaper ads protect the public's right to know

All kinds of local government decisions can affect your quality of life and your pocketbook. If a cell tower is built between your back porch and the rural scenery on the horizon, the value of your property can go down. And that, literally, could mean that you have less money to live on in retirement. ... State law requires that you get a heads up about decisions like this before they are made, so that you have the opportunity to influence them. That comes in the form of paid legal advertisements in a “newspaper of general circulation in the community.”