[Papillons]

Look at most newspapers these days -- they're shells of what they used to be after years of downsizing -- and you'll gain some appreciation for the Daily Sun. It's not a Pulitzer Prize winner, but it's never claimed to be. It's never been a secret that it exists to lure homebuyers to The Villages, so no, you won't find much "bad" news. But it is a sizable, vibrant paper with top-notch design and photography. The news sections are bigger than what you find in major metro papers. The sports section apparently has decent deadlines and gets in scores from almost every pro and college game in the Eastern and Central time zones, which is no longer the case with most papers on the East Coast (and important to me as a sports fan). It has travel, auto and home/garden sections, which have been eliminated by most other papers in cost-cutting moves. If you want to know where and when to go to a club meeting or read about someone who is doing great work in the community, it's in the Daily Sun. If you want breathless reporting on Stormy Daniels or Robert Mueller ... that's what CNN is for.

As for reported circulation decline, it's my understanding that the online publication's recent coverage is being guided largely by an ex-Daily Sun executive who moved to the "competition" a few months ago and has no love for his former employer. So maybe the report is accurate, or maybe we need to consider the source.