Just when everyone is predicting the death of daily newspapers, here comesThe Portland Daily Sun, a new quasi-daily freebie newspaper in Portland. I say “quasi-daily” because despite its name, The Portland Daily Sun isn’t daily. It will only be published Tuesday-Saturday.

The editor, Curtis Robinson, explains this contradiction in his lead columnby saying, “In newspapering, you’re ‘daily’ at four issues per week, and ‘weekly’ below that frequency.”

On yeah? Well, Curtis, in real life daily still means daily, and my advice would be to drop the “Daily” from the masthead, along with the kicker “Portland’s Daily Newspaper.” Because you’re not.

Seems like an inauspicious beginning to what residents of Portland have yearned for - some real competition to the Portland Press Herald, which has long had a monopoly on the news in this town, or at least behaved like it does. From what I hear, the new “daily” has set off a full-blown panic among the editors and management at 390 Congress Street. They’ve reassigned beats, refocused their attention on local coverage and even given someone the unenviable task of scanning all the local freebie papers on a daily basis for stories the Press Herald missed. Hey, nothing beats job security.

Competition is good for getting the creative juices flowing and waking up the 9-to-5ivers who have been napping on the job between their runs to Starbucks. But from what I’ve seen so far of the new “daily,” the panic at the PH might be premature or even needless. (Disclosure: the group that is in serious negotiations to buy the Press Herald and other Blethen newspapers is a client.)

It’s only been two issues, but here are my first impressions of the new “daily:”

Ho-Hum: They had a decent lead story in the first issue about the poor state of emergency services on Peaks Island, which the Press Herald quickly cribbed the next day. But the rest of the stuff was pretty standard, unimaginative fare. Some of it was downright confusing. A page-3 thumbsucker on FairPoint’s massive data transfer following its split from Verizon promised that the transfer “will pass unnoticed” by the typical customer, and that the whole transfer process could “become a model for the telecommunications industry.” But right below this was an AP story saying that thousands of angry FairPoint customers had lost their e-mail during the conversion and the company was calling in extra workers to deal with the crisis. Huh? In Wednesday’s edition, the Sun had two looonnnng stories about the City Council’s debate over whether to close The Cactus Club on Fore Street due to fights and other drunken behavior. But there was nothing much to the stories that couldn’t be found in the Press Herald’s equally standard coverage. Hey here’s an idea for both papers: why not send a reporter to actually go to the Cactus Club and report on what he sees? Oh yeah, The Bollard beat you to it, and even has the pictures. Now that’s coverage (or in this case uncoverage.)

Too Much Canned Fluff: What Portland needs is a LOCAL paper, a lively upstart that isn’t afraid to challenge authority and shake things up. Instead, the Daily Sun delivers too many wire stories, canned features, comics and crossword puzzles that can easily be found in other papers or on the web. It’s like they’re trying to be a grown-up newspaper when they should be the delinquent renegade. Content is still king, and if you just serve readers the same old stuff they can find on the web or in the other daily paper - even if it is free - what’s the point? The Daily Sun doesn’t even have a locally written editorial - inexcusable - just canned blather from the usual talking-head types who clog talk radio and TV news programs. Don’t we have enough of that already? 

Web? What web?: One of the paper’s real shortcomings is it’s website, a wholly unattractive, clunky and pretty useless contrivance. The first time I went to it none of the links worked. The next time I visited, I clicked on the e-edition link that gives a full online version of their print edition. Nice, except that on Wednesday I still got Tuesday’s paper, and navigating through the pages took eons, at least on my computer. Look, I want to see dead tree journalism survive as much as the next guy, but any newspaper that doesn’t have a well integrated web presence to compliment its print edition is going nowhere fast. 

I really hope that the Daily Sun improves and these shortcomings are just start-up jitters. We need a newspaper in this town that truly reflects the city and really gets underneath it. Perhaps the Press Herald under its new ownership will fill this void. Let’s hope somebody does.

PS: All you Twitter fans might get a kick out of following Mo Mehlsak (@mmehlsak), the editor of The Forecaster. Many of his posts point out how The Forecaster regularly beats the Press Herald on major and even minor stories in Portland and Southern Maine. The one about stores in the Old Port closing? Had that days ahead of the PH. Maine’s First Ship giving $25,000 to the Maine Maritime Museum? The Forecaster had it first.The campaign to reduce the auto excise tax? You read it first in the Forecaster. Hilarious, unless of course you work at the Press Herald, then there’s another word for it. Try embarrassing.

Will Somebody Explain This to Me: Why did the entire US economy go in the shitter so suddenly and so fast? As recently as last summer, things seemed to be humming right along. Now not a day goes by that some company doesn’t announce massive layoffs. Today it’s Panasonic cutting 15,000 jobs. Yesterday it was Starbucks, Pfizer, Catepiller, Home Depot - all announcing thousands of job cuts. We’re heading toward 10% unemployment, the worst economic downturn certainly in my lifetime. Yes, I’ve read tons of stories about the whole sub-prime mortgage mess and I know more than I care to about hedge funds, credit default swaps and even Ponzi schemes. But no one that I know of has really connected those problems to what’s happening to the auto industry and all the layoffs in corporate America, and why it all collapsed like dominoes beginning last fall. Sure we get the daily bad news stories, but where is the story that puts it all together, that connects the dots between what happened on Wall Street and what is now being felt on Main Street. If I missed it will somebody please send me the link?