With help from local investors, The City Wire continues to expand as an on-line-only source of news for Fort Smith and Northwest Arkansas. It should be interesting to watch it compete with the Stephens Media-owned Southwest Times Record.

There won’t be two newspapers in the traditional sense, of course, as the headline suggests. The City Wire need not buy paper, ink or printing presses. But it is staffed and reports along the lines of the old-school newspaper model, thanks in part to the many former newspaper people working there. Boss Michael Tilley today announced Cyd King, a former Democrat-Gazette writer, had gone to work to cover arts and entertainment. That fills out the bill for City Wire, already covering news, business, politics and sports through full-time and free-lance writers.

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Nationwide, I read yesterday, the ranks of newspaper employees declined again in 2010, by a shocking 30 percent.

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