By Staff
It's not your imagination. The newspaper you are holding is smaller than the one you were reading a week ago.
Beginning Sunday, The Brewton Standard went to a narrower paper width - about an inch narrower. The reason is simple: Paper is a lot more expensive than it was a year ago.
That leaves us with a few choices. We could increase the price of the newspaper, or make it a bit smaller and keep the same features and the same price upon which our readers have come to rely.
This isn't a decision that was made because of the current economy; paper prices have been steadily increasing for years. The newspaper you are holding today is much narrower than the one I read every morning in elementary school.
In fact, the newspaper many of you are reading probably isn't even printed on paper. You might be scanning these lines on a computer screen on our Web page, which is where many people turn for their local news these days.
Times are changing, and newspapers have to keep up. Our business has had to adapt to a number of changes over the years - and no death knell ever sounded has ever actually come true.
Radio news and television news never killed newspapers, and the Internet won't either - it's simply another place for us to use our news-gathering skills to showcase our community.
In coming days, we will debut a new brewtonstandard.com. Our new Web site will be a complement to our newspaper - you'll have content you won't find in the printed product, and vice versa. The Web site will allow us to have even more interaction with our readers. You'll be able to post comments on stories, upload your own photos to our photo galleries, and view video of local events, among other new features. We're excited about the new opportunities we have to cover the community not only in the newspaper but also in an even greater capacity on the Internet.
Our business is changing, and we're adapting along with it. But one thing will not change, and that is our commitment to covering Brewton better than anyone.
Kerry Whipple Bean is
publisher of The Brewton Standard. She can be reached at kerry.bean@brewtonstandard.com