Publishing a monthly “newspaper” has its challenges. First, it is hard to report “news” when you come out once a month. The events you report on are very often dated or premature. It is only occasionally when you get to report an event in a semi-timely manner.

Another problem is the volume of events that come through in a month. You would be surprised at the number events that occur in a 30-day period. It is simply not possible to cover them all in the number of pages we publish.

Fortunately, we now have a solution to these problems. Our newly improved Web site is affording us the opportunity to properly address the issues of timeliness and volume. With the newspaper we have to enforce a deadline two weeks before the publication date in order to write, layout, proof, print and mail the newspaper.

There are no deadlines with the Web site. We can put up news the day we get it. That gives events more currency. There is also no limit on the number of pages on the Web site. We can put up all the stories we get up on the Web site. We can put up all the photos we want on the Web site. We can even put up videos on the Web site; we can add documents; and we can put up direct links to related items on the Internet.

Those are not all the benefits. There are no printing and mailing costs on the Web site, we only pay a very modest monthly fee; a fee that is a nano amount compared to the costs of producing the newspaper.

So why do we continue printing the newspaper? We do because we are able to evangelize to more than 46,000 Catholic households, many of who are not yet used to getting their news from the Internet. Until our readers indicate a greater use of the Internet, we will continue to reach out to them in the most effective means possible.
In the meantime, the facility of the Internet affords us the opportunity to make our printed publication better. It’s a win-win situation.

Because we can put up basically everything we get on the Web site, what we have to leave out of the newspaper gets the publicity it deserves. Because we can put items instantly on the Web site, we do not have to run dated information in the newspaper.

On the flipside, because we do not have to put everything we get in the newspaper we will have more space to run in-depth stories on issues that affect our daily lives and can have a profound impact on our eternal lives. Because, we can put everyday stories on the Web site, we can focus our efforts on fewer stories in the newspaper that we can treat comprehensively.

Thanks to the utility of our Web site, we will gradually begin to transition from a “newspaper” to a “newsmagazine”.  The definition of a newspaper is “a publication, usually issued daily or weekly, containing current news, editorials, feature articles and usually advertising.” We do not publish daily or weekly and most of the times our news is not “current.”

A newsmagazine is defined as “a magazine, usually published weekly, containing reports and analyses of current events.” While we do not publish weekly, we hope to shift to including more detailed reports and greater assessment and evaluation of the subjects we are examining.

This transition will be gradual. This issue, for example, has more of a newsmagazine cover rather than a newspaper front page. Some of the history pieces, which are more in-depth, have more of a magazine approach.

We are very proud of our publication and are equally proud of our Web site. We expect to continue to provide a quality print product as we move to a newsmagazine format. We hope our readers agree.