It's been a heck of a year for Mesquite Local News.

In June, the paper was sold to Stephens Media, the parent company of Nevada's largest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

It was a move made to ensure that the newspaper would survive the worst recession in decades by putting it in the hands of an experienced, successful news company.

Meanwhile, like bombs falling on a battle scene, reports were hitting the internet and TV seemingly every day about major daily newspapers scaling back, going to internet-only, or going out of business completely.

The elimination of the Rocky Mountain News newspaper in Denver and the end of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper after printing for more than 146 years were two of the biggest bombshells to rattle the news landscape.

Bankruptcies by the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chicago Tribune, which included the Los Angeles Times, made the journalism industry begin to look like a corporate graveyard.

Closer to home, two longtime Nevada newspapers also went out of business.

The Boulder City News closed two months ago, a news organization that had been in existence since 1943, leaving the community without its own newspaper.

Down the road, the Henderson newspaper also went under.

Fortunately, the same company which stepped in to purchase Mesquite Local News has now stepped up to start a new newspaper in Boulder City.

The bottom line is that the newspaper industry is changing.

The internet is quickly overtaking print publications as the primary source of in-depth news for Americans, and is expected to eventually surpass television as the number one place for people to get their news.

In fact, Amazon.com announced this week that, for the first time ever, online sales of digital e-books surpassed sales of printed books.

At Mesquite Local News, we're very fortunate to be at the forefront of this emerging medium.

It's particularly advantageous in this climate.

With printing costs sky high, newspapers have to be very judicious with the number of pages they publish.

This unfortunately means that some press releases and minor news items aren't always going to make it into the printed newspaper.

Also, some stories wind up being edited and shortened in order to fit.

But because of MesquiteLocalNews.com, those expanded press releases and news items almost always have a home.

Even better, those items can be published in a far more timely fashion than any printed newspaper.

In some instances, things that happen today won't make it into print until almost a week later.

Fortunately, things that happen today will most likely be in tomorrow's internet news site.

Best of all, the reach of news on the internet far surpasses the limited distribution of local news racks, or the miniscule number of out-of-town subscribers.

News on the world wide web is truly world wide.

In November, we set another record for readership, with 145,287 hits during the month.

That breaks the old record of 144,632 set in April of this year.

This is particularly important for a town like Mesquite, whose prosperity depends on visitors and tourists who are looking online to find out about towns they would like to visit, and a city where much of the citizenry actually lives elsewhere during the summer months.

Those citizens can keep up to date with Mesquite while spending the summer someplace else, in real time, instead of waiting for a week-old newspaper to show up in the mail bearing news that's two weeks old.

One other important facet of online news, and MesquiteLocalNews.com in particular, is the fact that the readers get to have a say.

In traditional newspapers, the best you can expect is for three or four "Letters to the Editor" to appear as the community's feedback.

And again, that feedback will almost always be a week or two behind the story which prompted it.

With online news, readers get to post their comments the same day, and let their feelings be known about any and every story online.

Also, thanks to online polls, readers can actually be a part of making the news, with their opinions helping to guide and shape the community.

To be sure, there are people without computers who are being left out of the fast-breaking news scene.

But there has always been a segment of the population left out of news cycles over the centuries, including those who could not read, others who couldn't afford the 10 cents to buy a paper out of the rack, and towns which simply didn't have a newspaper at all.

Like those other hurdles, eventually the world will reach the point where internet-connected computers are as common in every home as TV sets are today.

And when that day comes, it is our hope that Mesquite Local News will be there, continuing to offer up-to-date local news and information to the people of this valley, this country, and this world.