Le Roy High School is presenting a production of the Disney musical Newsies on March 10, 11, 12, 18 and 19 in the school auditorium.

Newsies is the story of a homeless NYC newsboy, Jack "Cowboy" Kelly, who befriends two newcomers to the trade.  Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer sets new rules that make it harder for newspaper hawkers -- newsies -- to make a buck so the boys go on strike. A journalist sympathetic to the boys' cause gives them some tips on public relations and the newsies battle grips the city.

The story is based on an actual labor dispute between newspaper salesboys and Pulitzer in the summer of 1899.  For more on the history behind the story, click here.

Performances in Le Roy are:

• March 10, 7 p.m.
• March 11, 7 p.m.
• March 12, 7 p.m.
• March 18, 7 p.m.
• March 19,7 p.m.

Tickets can be purchased at leroycsd.org or at the auditorium, 9300 South Street Road.

For more photos or to purchase prints, click here.

Circulation as measured by the Audit Bureau of Circulation dropped most for major metro papers, but there were winners and losers across the board.

The New York Times, New York Post, Newsday and New York Daily News all lost circulation.

The Batavia Daily News is not part of the ABC, so its circulation figures are not reported as part of this ABC release.

UPDATE: Media consultant and expert Alan Mutter:

The first double-digit circulation decline in history means only 12.9% of the U.S. population buys a daily newspaper. The analysis is based on data provided by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, an industry-funded group.

Newspaper circulation now is lower than the 41.1 million papers sold in 1940, the earliest date for which records are published by the Newspaper Association of America. Back in 1940, newspapers were purchased by 31.1% of the population.

Leave it to the political machines then to undermine the sanctity of even this bastion of individual expression by issuing cookie-cutter templates that authors are encouraged to pretty much just sign and send in to the newspaper as his or her own letter to the editor.

Leave it  to the political machines to squelch any vestige of individuality still left us, for we can't have too much of that running rampant in an election year. Folks may actually wake up to the reality that just about none of these candidates—whose own individuality has often been subsumed by the machine—really represent them and theirs.

Here's what I read in an editorial from the Democrat & Chronicle this morning:

Some candidates and their agents on the Web are urging their supporters to use their "guides" in writing letters to the editor. The guides are really form letters in another form. The practice is dishonest and unfair. The dishonesty is obvious — the "guided" letters in no way disclose that the content is largely the product of someone other than the writer. It's unfair, too, because legitimate letter writers who produce original material may lose their space on the page to a bogus submission.

As with so much else on the Web, common sense is the best guide. If an anti-John McCain or Barack Obama site tells you something is a "fact," confirm it with one or two other sources. Don't forward material to your buddy list without fact-checking. If you write anything on the Web, be sure the work is your own and that fact and opinion are clearly delineated.

The campaigns should put a stop to phony letters. But the best way to end this practice is for those asked to engage in these fake-outs to say no. Better Web practice begins with millions of daily users doing the right thing.

There are a few things at work here worth some conversation.

1. How does anonymously produced generic information effect the relativity of truth and individuality? Does it further obscurity or transparency?

2. What are we to make of the ever-broadening underhandedness of the political machines that seem to outpace at every turn any sense of what it means to do the right thing? (This would be the main question posed by the editorial.)

3. What has become of individual expression if the line between the individual and the machine has become so blurred that the former acts as no more than the ratifier of the latter's mass-produced misinformation?

Finally, what may be the most important question to ask here is: How do we navigate in such a sea of misinformation? The editorial suggests that the responsibility lies with each individual—make sure your own work is your own work. But isn't this getting ahead of ourselves when the real issue is that the individual has been so comprimised by such political tactics that he or she sometimes can't even be located?