End of home delivery of Journal Sentinel will create need By JIM SCHUH of The Gazette There's only one Wisconsin news medium with a statewide reach, and that reach is about to be considerably lessened. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will soon stop home delivery outside its "designated market area," meaning southeast Wisconsin, most of Dane County and, surprisingly, the Wisconsin Dells area. It'll end in the Stevens Point area Dec. 30. In central Wisconsin you'll be able to buy the daily and Sunday Journal Sentinel at the newsstand but it won't come to your door. If you haven't been a subscriber you're in the vast majority, so this may mean little to you. Still, for those who've been getting it, its daily delivery filled a need that won't be satisfied in any other way. What television station covers all of Wisconsin? None. What broadcast medium does? Wisconsin Public Radio, and it does a good job, but it can't possibly do it as thoroughly as a newspaper. The Journal Sentinel hasn't been providing as much statewide coverage as it once did, but still, no one else comes close. Although you'll still be able to buy the Journal Sentinel every day at the newsstand, most will not. Some will check the newspaper's Web site, but somehow it won't be the same. Not everyone cares to stare at that monitor. Publisher Keith Spore said upstate readers will henceforth see "an improved paper with later news and more complete sports scores." But the decision, of course, was really based on economics. Home delivery is expensive, and the Journal Sentinel couldn't make it up from advertising revenue. The newspaper's up-state advertisers are few, and Milwaukee-area advertisers don't much care how many papers are sold in the far reaches of Wisconsin. The economics of newspapering have changed and the Journal Sentinel decision was perhaps inevitable. Still, it'll leave a yawning gap. -- George Rogers