by Peter Weinberger

I’m surprised the post office didn’t kill Saturday delivery sooner. They’re broke. Even though they have been hemorrhaging money for the past several years, they needed permission from Congress to make any significant change, and you know what that means…nothing gets done.

We knew it was coming, remain committed to delivering our newspaper through the mail, and have been planning for months to change to a weekly Friday COURIER starting on Friday, March 1.

As owner and publisher, I’m so excited about this change, we are throwing a community party on Thursday, March 7 with the Claremont Chamber of Commerce.

Our attitude was simple. We were not going to wait for USPS to figure out when and how to cut services. That’s why the COURIER staff reviewed every option to sustain a healthy community newspaper, while keeping the high content standards our readers and advertisers expect.

And did we ever come up with a plan!

As mentioned, beginning March 1 the COURIER will be delivered by the post office to your mailbox every Friday. The paper will be noticeably thicker, as we add pages and color to accommodate a week’s worth of news. We will invest in cleaner, whiter newsprint to make the photography pop, the advertising sing and the text easier to read.

We are not stopping there. Parts of the newspaper will be redesigned to help guide readers through a larger edition. The calendar will be reworked with new features (this includes a new nightlife column) and more photography. Remember Back Page? Claremonters like gossip, and we are bringing back this ever-popular column. And there’s more to come.

The COURIER is committed to producing a great community newspaper. We understand our readers and advertisers rely on the print edition and we have no intention of cutting corners…so to speak.

We also realize there are many of you who need your Claremont news 24/7, which is why the daily updates on our website will be a perfect fit. Since some of this content will be published before the print edition, it will stay behind a paywall for subscribers only. If you have a subscription, just create a login and full access is yours. Just like our passion for the print edition, we understand that this full-throttle world expects news published in a timely manner.

But again, we are not stopping there! Our online users will get emails each week with Claremont news highlights, with links to the full story on the website. Don’t want them? You can cancel the emails any time. Use a smartphone? Starting in March, check out our new mobile website designed for that little screen. With over 2200 Facebook friends, we will continue to post news links and display our best photos of the week.

Even the way we display photography on the website will be improved. Instead of one photo gallery per print edition, photo gallery per print edition, now a gallery will be attached to the end of stories so you can see the images from that particular shoot. Read all about an event…see the photos packaged together with the story.

To continue our focus on helping small businesses, we have created simple, easy to understand online marketing packages to enhance print advertising. Our widely popular online business directory already sends 1200 customers to Claremont businesses a day. And it’s free to register your business.

Don’t have the time to figure out your Internet marketing? We will help you get started and even maintain your presence as one of our customers. The COURIER will remain a key component in helping Claremont businesses succeed. We have done this for decades, and will continue to do so in this ever changing digital age.

I could keep going, but we want to surprise you all as we role out these improvements next month. I also realize in this day, change can be scary and create gloom about the future. But even as other newspapers struggle, the COURIER will continue to prosper as one of the best community newspaper companies in the country.

From the staff and myself, we want to thank you for all your support and good wishes.