Local News Every once in a while, I'll check in on the website of my hometown newspaper.  It's not a daily ritual (though it was for a while back in college, when I still knew most of the names that would pop up in the high school sports section), but it's always been a good way for me to feel more connected to West Virginia.

It's also made me feel pretty alien at times.  I remember logging on late one night from a computer cluster in New York City.  I was 21, it was my second summer working in the city (I was PAing on a movie), and I thought I'd read the paper while sending some emails home.

That night, the front page story of the Charleston Gazette was all about how some local dogs were getting to audition for David Letterman's Stupid Pet Tricks.  If I remember correctly, it was just an audition - no Charleston animals had actually been selected yet, but the idea that they might be - and then flown to NEW YORK CITY - was big news.

Of course, earlier that day, I had breezed by the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway where Letterman tapes.  I doubt I even looked up.  My world had changed, I realized, and it felt pretty strange.

Reading the online edition tonight in San Francisco still feels a little weird.  Most of the stories are about events I won't attend, politicians I can't vote for...  But still, I enjoy it.  Apparently Charleston now has a burrito place - Cilantro's - which I'm pretty excited to try out when I'm home in December.

I'm also impressed with how tech savvy the paper has become - there are lots of blogs, and it looks like they've just rolled out some streaming video content, like this report on the WV International Film Festival.

I used to love the film festival (so much so that, in 9th grade, I actually wrote a guest column about it FOR the paper, trying to get more people to come).  It was always an opportunity to see a bunch of movies that wouldn't typically play in Charleston.

So, the fact that I saw Wordplay - one of this year's advertised movies - months and months ago in San Francisco also feels a little weird.   For the last several years, I've lived in cities where EVERY movie plays.  Where there are TONS of burrito places.

And yet, I'm still pretty psyched about Cilantro's.  And I've been having a lot of fun pouring over all of the new videos on the paper's site, although I think I'll always prefer the print edition.  Not because these aren't improvements - they are - it's just that holding a copy in my hands is more in line with why I continue to read the paper in the first place. 

It feels like home.