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Foremost, it means the loss of Thomas Friedman. In an era in which the Middle East is the epicenter of world affairs, Friedman's clear, cogent voice has been invaluable. His deep knowledge of his subjects and the simple, straightforward manner in which he shares his insights will be missed.

I heard him speak last year at Elon University, where he was just as engaging in person as in writing.

As my colleague, Editor John Robinson, noted in his column last week, this was not an easy decision. "But given our direction in focusing on local news, we could certainly devote the $34,000 a year we spend on the Times reports better elsewhere."

In addition to Friedman, Dowd and Herbert, the cancellation of Times package also means the paper won't feature the regular columns of David Brooks and occasional contributions from Paul Krugman and William Kristoff. It means the loss of Times-affiliated columnists such as Derek Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe.

It means the loss as well of longer commentary pieces from The Times and other papers.

And it means a reduction in some of the wire material we use for our books pages.

Having said all this, I understand John's thinking and I might have made the same call. The bulk of material that the subscription provided for our news, sports and features departments was seldom used because it was too long and typically arrived too late.

I inquired with Times representatives about the possibilities of separate buys — of paying weekly fees for individual columnists such as Friedman. Thanks, the Times replied, but no thanks. You either buy the whole package or you get nothing.

So here we are. And we are not alone. Other papers facing similar dilemmas have been forced to make the same tough call.

Where to from here? Because I don't happen to have $34,000 lying around, I will work with my staff, and with input from you, to add new voices to the op-ed pages, some local, some from national sources.
Other familiar favorites, such as Leonard Pitts, Molly Ivins and Thomas Sowell, aren't going anywhere. You also already may have noticed some new faces whose columns were receiving trial runs in the past four months.

As of June, when our Times columnists end, we will add to the lineup Trudy Rubin, Charles Krauthammer and Eugene Robinson.

Rubin is world affairs columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer who specializes in the Middle East, Russia and Eastern Europe and has made recent, multiple trips to Iraq, as well as Iran, Jordan, Israel and the West Bank.

Charles Krauthammer writes for the Washington Post on politics, foreign policy and culture. He is winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary.

Eugene Robinson, also from the Washington Post, writes about politics and culture.
All three have appeared in the News & Record and will begin to run regularly in June.

Meanwhile, more major changes are in the offing. The editorial staff is considering a variety of new features and approaches to make the opinion pages livelier, more topical and more incisive. We'll seek your input as we plan a major redesign of the section for the fall.

By the time we're done, we hope, we'd have added much more than we've taken away.

Editorial Page Editor Allen H. Johnson's columns run on Sundays in the Ideas section. Contact him at ajohnson@news-record.com or 373-7010.