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CONTACT THE ENTERPRISE Jocelyn Robinson, Copy editor jrobinson@heraldnet.com

There will be one less voice in county forum

The Puget Sound area, and Snohomish County in particular, recently lost an important voice in its marketplace of ideas.

Earlier this month, The Seattle Times announced it was eliminating 200 positions and closing its Snohomish County and Eastside offices.

The Times' Snohomish bureau covered many of the same events and meetings that The Enterprise does, and although they were technically our competition, there is no joy in saying farewell to a committed group of journalists.

Too many cities in this day and age are becoming one-paper towns; this shrinking market limits the number of venues for public comment and restricts the information making its way to local citizens. Democracy works best when citizens have a forum to voice their opinion and when newspapers take their role as government watchdog -- be it at the city, county or state level -- seriously.

Competition can be a great motivator, pushing news staff to try harder to outshine their opponents and pushing them to dig deep to bring readers the news that impacts them the most.

Unfortunately, the Times isn't the first paper to face financial difficulties and it won't be the last.

It's hard to see a newspaper cut staff -- especially in today's struggling economy -- knowing it's ultimately the readers who will lose out in the end.

"It's a little death," Snohomish reporter Diane Wright said in the Times article about the cuts. "There's no other way to call it."

So we wish the staff of the Times' Snohomish office good luck and pledge to continue on in the same spirit of competition as if they had never left.