<H2><b>SYDNEY STAR OBSERVER LOSES CREDIBILITY</b></H2>

The Sydney Star Observer (SSO) was, for many years, the leading gay weekly paper in Australia.

There was a wide coverage of news and there was a broad spectrum of community issues addressed in depth and with good reporting.

Newspapers are having a difficult time since the advent of so much information which is now available online. However there is no excuse for the deterioration in the quality of what is still presented in hard copy which comes out in print once a week.

The SSO editorial board has decided to drop the letters page in the print copy, informing readers who bother to query this that letters are no longer printed because they are all available online.

It would be interesting to see what would happen to those daily newspapers which stopped printing letters every day. They would assuredly lose readership which is already falling because of online availability and because the quality of the journalism presented to us these days is of such a poor standard due to the proprietors trying to toe the politicians' lines - or their own!!! think Rupert Murdoch!

The result is a weekly paper which is a waste of good paper. News is poor, journalism is poor, the information is poor and community support is poor.

What next for a paper that was once so good??