Banner-Graphic
The landscape of the news-making business changes daily.
One day, we are out covering a three-car pileup. The next day, we may be out covering a town hall meeting, basketball game or a trial at the courthouse.
Continually feeding a news-hungry public is our duty.
The Banner Graphic has undergone several changes in the past several years.
We've expanded our Internet news coverage in addition to adding several reader-friendly items, including TextCaster -- which provides up-to-date information via cell phone -- Mycapture -- which allows readers to purchase photographs through the website -- mail delivery -- which allowed us to improve our delivery to our customers -- and Marketplace -- which is our newest venture, an online phone directory.
The Banner has served the Putnam County community for more than 100 years and has seen quite a lot of growth during that span.
For years, we've offered a newspaper to subscribers Monday through Saturday, keeping pace with the ever-changing face of news.
Recent events on a national, state and local scale, however, made practically every business retool policies. Count the Banner in this as well.
The newspaper will undergo another change at the turn of the year.
Beginning Jan. 6, 2009, the Banner Graphic will no longer publish a paper on Tuesdays.
Historically, Tuesday has been our weakest day and the rising cost to put it together, print it and distribute it to the reader is too high to continue, especially with the current economic climate the nation is facing.
Across the nation and the state of Indiana, several newspapers are moving in this direction. Even large dailies like the Detroit Free Press are cutting from seven days a week home delivery to three days a week.
Heading into 2009, subscription rates for the newspaper will not change. Had we continued publishing a newspaper six days a week, subscribers would have faced a significant increase in subscription rates.
What does this mean to those who have paid for more than one month? Whatever your expiration date would have been will be extended to every Tuesday that we don't publish a paper. For example, if you have three months left on your subscription at the end of 2008, you will have 13 days added to the end of your subscription. So, instead of expiring at the end of March, it won't expire until the 13th publishing day of April.
Again, the duty of a newspaper is to provide the most up-to-date information as possible to readers. We hope to continue doing that for all of you for many years to come.