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Last week’s heat wave was so unbearable it even figured heavily in Hamburg Area Item editor Joshua Sophy’s blog.

Josh wrote:

It was a scorcher outside Saturday and Sunday, and Monday only promises to be the hottest day of the year, yet. I cruised Hamburg today looking for some heat imagery to relay to readers in the most artistic sense, but found not much happening. The streets were pretty much empty, and since I don't know where the pool is, just yet, or if there is even a public pool (Should I be admitting that?), so there wasn't much in the art department from that angle.

Interestingly, since the heat and the violent storms that followed shortly after and took out power in some areas occurred just about on top of our production cycle, little if anything about the weather made it into our papers.

Such are the fortunes of the weekly newspaper cycle. By this week it was all old news.

But thanks to our growing web presence, and increasing cooperation with our local daily paper, The Mercury, that is beginning to change.

This week The Boyertown Area Times broke an important story on line, days ahead of our ability to break it in our print edition as concerned parents and students successfully stopped “the block” at The Boyertown Area School District, a controversial plan to introduce block scheduling at the high school, perhaps as early as next year.

Breaking news on line has given us an ability previously beyond the reach of weeklies to tell important stories as they happen while still keeping our community focus as “local news for local people.”