We, like many other newspapers in the country, are specializing in what we do best -- local news, sports and entertainment.

You won't get that in any other newspaper.

Yes, we sometimes use stories that have been in other publications as timeless feature stories.

We are now spending a great deal of effort in putting up news shortly after it happens on our website, bakersfield.com. It is the best way to keep up to date with what is happening in the community.  Plus we have video and audio features.

There are lots of people, myself included, who even though I know what happend, I like to read about it in my morning newspaper.

My solution would be to read the Californian first, then you can complain about the LAT.

The Californian, for its size, is actually a pretty good paper. There's the occasional misstep (why in Zeus' name was the story on an old fogie Super Bowl (tm) party being dissed on THE FRONT PAGE today?!!) but it's actually pretty good. Biggest problem it, and all other papers have, is the younger generations as a rule don't read. They don't read anything, including newspapers.

There's of course also AP articles for national news - I don't usually read those since usually 'd have already picked them up from the internet - that many newspapers share.

The occasional reprint from the LA Times doesn't bother me. I get the Californian for the local news content. The L.A Times won't be real useful to me since I don't care about L.A's local news - I don't live there! So I personally would rather stop subscribing to the Times if the duplication was bothering me ;-)