More local news, more investigations, a conservative local columnist, more on Latin America -- these are some of the trends that have emerged as readers continue responding to my question of what The Miami Herald should emphasize.

More than 200 readers have sent their ideas in the wake of staff cutbacks that are forcing editors to adjust resources and coverage. I published some excerpts two weeks ago.

Now let me respond to your demands, share the reactions I got from editors and add some perspective from a national study on what other newspapers are doing in response to falling advertising revenue everywhere.

The space that The Miami Herald dedicates to news will be reduced this year by 3 percent, Anders Gyllenhaal, The Miami Herald's executive editor, told me. The first signs of change are already visible. Last week, The Miami Herald returned the size of the Tropical Life section to broadsheet, after years as a tabloid.

Gyllenhaal said that he hopes to achieve the content cuts by imperceptibly shaving space on slow news days, and the change in Tropical Life helps. The idea is to have flexibility not just to shave, but also to expand the paper when something major happens, such as the recent escape of a former Colombian presidential candidate from guerrillas there. The broadsheet Tropical Life now makes it easier to coordinate the expansion and contraction, or ''breathing,'' of the entire paper from day to day. ''Our goal is to save space without hurting our content,'' he said. The new format also allows Tropical Life production on many days to end later in the day, and thus be more ''live,'' he said.

MORE LOCAL FOCUS

A less-visible change was the appointment last week of a new metro editor, Jay Ducassi. The former state and political editor, Ducassi was also once a Page One editor at The Wall Street Journal. He now sits in The Miami Herald's hot seat, because what readers demanded -- almost to the letter -- was more local news. The reader responses are not a scientific survey and I won't get into the false precision of tallying how many said what, but marketers know that when someone writes, many others probably think the same.

''What we don't get, and surely need, is the information about our towns and local government,'' wrote Nancy McCue of Cutler Bay. ``I want to know how the local council voted. I want to know how the Miami-Dade Commission responded to various issues. I want to know what is happening in Tallahassee.''

Many readers said the local news they want begins with bread-and-butter reporting from their Neighbors editions -- but they aren't getting it. That news includes what town governments, community groups, schools and, well, just neighbors, are doing -- good and bad. I will do my own evaluation of the Neighbors sections in a future column. (Please send me your specific criticisms or plaudits.)

What the readers overwhelmingly said The Miami Herald is doing very well, and what they want more of, is local investigative reporting. I was surprised. Accountants have been forcing newspapers across the country to cut back on investigative reporting because it is expensive, disappears with the trash the day after it is published and seems not to drive readership.

But respondents young and old, liberal and conservative, said they subscribe to The Miami Herald in large part because of investigations such as last week's series on the licensing of convicted criminals as mortgage brokers. Many of these brokers went on to defraud home buyers. Investigations into politically charged matters such as the recent series on detainees at Guantánamo may be less universally supported than the uncovering of local corruption that affects pocketbooks, but they seem to be read all the same.

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