Dear newspaper publishers,

People are calling you names: “News Sites Are Fatter and Slower Than Ever.” They question your competence: “Local newspapers have done a terrible job building local digital audiences.”

Your local papers are the major employer of our nation’s reporters and the reservoir of regional history. We need you, but you’re losing us.

Barrett Golding, web developer and leader of Hearing Voices from NPR, looks at the issue of the poor performance of most newspaper websites.