Letter to editor: Hope won't fade that Item will return to daily routine

Reading The Sumter Daily Item, also known to me over the years by other closely related names, was one of my daily routines well over 50 years.

I used to go to the mailbox or the front yard every morning to pick up the paper and read it before I assumed my daily tasks as a biology professor at Morris College.

Now the paper arrives in my mailbox on Wednesdays and Saturdays, a time when I am not available to receive it and get my daily dose of news and information, as I used to do daily. In fact, I really do not see the paper until the afternoon on Saturdays, and not until I get back from work past 6 p.m. on Wednesdays.

By that time, there is no time slot allocated to leaf through the pages of the paper - and the news contained therein is already old. I know, you will tell me that there is the e-version available on the computer or the smartphone daily! Well, I like to read the PAPER the old-fashioned way, not on an electronic screen (be it small or large)!

Secondly, you will tell me, too, that the Item must adapt to technological advances, and the readers should adapt to read it on an electronic format as well! Well and good for those who like to do that!

Thirdly, you will also tell me that the two-day issues per week of the paper contain more in-depth information and more community coverage than before. That may be the case! However, that takes too long to read, and the coverage of events would have bypassed its utility! It is also economical, and I understand that!

In short, the Daily Item used to provide my daily dosage of local information and current events every morning! Now, when it gets to me, most of the items are already passe'!

As an old timer, I also used to follow in the Daily Item Dave Peek's social commentaries that used to tackle societal and community issues with aptness and delicacy! Is there another person who can assume Dave Peek's role?

Dave would have allayed our frustration over those traffic lights at certain city intersections that stay red for one minute and 25 seconds in one direction and turn to green for only 10 seconds for the other direction. Who programmed those lights? What is the purpose of such lopsided time inequity?

Will our beloved Sumter Daily Item ever return?

Our hope will never fade!

RADMAN M. ALI

Sumter