They have taken the letters to the editor off the website (though the editorials remain). Without being able to read the letters to the editor, where am I going to get my daily dose of paranoia and ignorance?

Yesterday I learned that a good friend of mine from Junior High had died.  I knew that he had been in the paper a couple of times in the past few years and I wanted to read about it.  I ran a search on the NG site and came up with… today’s news.  Not very helpful.  Google search, cached results later, I found what I was looking for.  Oh well, back to microfiche for me, I guess.

Actually you can still get to the axe story (the feel good story of the year!) - http://www.news-gazette.com/news/courts-police-and-fire/2010-02-06/champaign-burglary-victim-strikes-back-ax.html. They really should have buried this one.

I still think it’s pretty funny that they offer all their local news headlines on Twitter, with links to the full articles, for free. I’m happy they’re trying to leverage social networking, but local news is the only reason I’d buy their product. Since they’re giving it away for free, why would I ever buy a subscription?
I honestly feel bad for newspapers. How can they stay viable? It seems that the only way they’ll attract the younger crowd is to give away their content for free. Even the New York Times doesn’t bring in enough ad revenue, apparently, for that to be a viable approach.
 

Joel, the N-G has been charging “archive fees” on older Web content for years. Also, the “vault” in the basement of the Main St. office only keeps back (print) issues for 1 year. Although this might be cumbersome for casual reading of current news, my suggestion to get around their iffy public Web presence is to go to the UI’s newspaper room in the Main Library and use their subscription search service which allows access to content from hundreds of national and dozens of Illinois papers. (Presumably, the public libraries have this service too.) You can find what content you need and then A. print it out or B. send it to yourself as a text-only e-mail. Of course, that doesn’t help those with limited or no transportation to campus.

I think the new site is a vast improvement. Search will be ironed out (search is always evolving). I like the tag cloud and the twitter integration.
Most of you commenters are confusing the problem newspapers face (in general) as they try to monetize content with the redesign of the News Gazette site specifically. Although the link redirects should be dealt with, the overall implementation IS better.
Whenever a site launches a new design there’s always a barrage of criticism. Time is the true test. Just look at how many people complain about Facebook every time it changes and still they stick around.

Older articles are available from the public library websites for both Champaign and Urbana libraries through the database described by Jason above.  You do need a library card to access these.  Call the library for help using this service.

According to a reliable source at the N-G, the letters to the editor were taken off the web site to discourage Tom Napier from writing his monthly letter in support of the Chief

Anyone who has run a website with Drupal, which that’s what I’ve I’ve heard the new N-G site is, knows it is a painful platform… especially when you’re trying to get a site up and working.
That being said, this is one of the ugliest sites I’ve seen in a long while.  One beef I have is that the page is way too narrow for all the stuff they have on it.  Unless you’re on a clunker of a computer from the early 00s, your screen settings are much wider than the visible space the N-G site uses.  But, I think that’s just a standard size no one has thought to expand on.  CNN.com, for example, uses a similar width.
One comment above asked who in their 30s actually reads the paper version of the N-G.  I do, and I’m in my 30s.  I certainly would miss out on a lot of good news stories that probably wouldn’t catch my eye if I weren’t reading the paper version.  I like a web-less newspaper with my breakfast.  I was also a proud supporter of their switch to morning delivery.  At least I can pretend the news they are printing is fresh, not two days old as it used to be.  All that being said, I feel the need to shove red hot tie irons in my eyes each time I read a letter to the editor or a Coupon Lady’s article.  Is her article worth the raise in subscription fee they are now charging for the paper version?

Really? I thought it was to stop Mark Thompson’s monthly letter about Bill Ayres.

I’m a 30-something subscriber to the paper version of the N-G.  Like @Congressman I like to read an actual paper in the morning, and think they do a good job of covering local news.  I’m also a web designer and have some major criticisms of the new site (I’m the one who asked them about the archives story links via Twitter).  However, I don’t rely on the site as my main source of information, so I’m willing to give them time to work out the kinks.  My gut tells me the major impetus to the redesign was to upgrade to a better CMS (Drupal was mentioned).  If the new system is easier for them to use and organize content in the long run then kudos to them.  I don’t think it does much to improve the user experience, but hopefully they will review the feedback and make adjustments. The fact that there has been such a strong negative reaction tells me that people DO value the N-G as a source of information.

@joelgillespie “I’m sure we’re not a very representative group, but are there any other N-G paper subscribers reading this?”
I am both a print and e-reader subscriber.  I’m also a blogger, social media user, advertiser, etc.  I think the site re-design is aesthetically poor, but that’s just a matter of taste. 
The greater issue for me are the awful design decisions - the broken links to old articles, the crippled search, broken RSS, and the deliberately reduced content for online readers.
Because of those design decisions, the NG can no longer be relied upon as a paper of record.  The Carrington site that SP just did with UCIMC is a great example of that.  The Carrington documents used to be easy to find on the NG site, but now they’ve either moved it or removed it, and that makes them an unreliable resource.  Thank goodness for SP and UCIMC archiving all that material and making easily available.