One of the truly wonderful things about running a newspaper isnothing is ever routine. We never produce the same product twice -each issue has different stories, photos, graphics and ads. Eachday – sometimes each hour – brings on a new challenge our staffmust embrace in order to bring the important issues of the day toour readers.

For years, The DAILY LEADER has been publishing a newspaperevery Sunday through Friday.

That, however, will change next month. We will discontinue ourMonday edition beginning July 5.

You would think with all the flexibility we must accommodate inour daily lives, making a change to our publishing frequency wouldbe an easy decision. It was not!

We understand you count on us to cover the important news andevents of the area. We will continue to do so. We know you enjoyseeing your friends, family and neighbors featured on our pages. Wewill continue to publish those.

We know you rely on information provided in the LEADER to keepyou informed. We will continue to provide that information.

We just will be delivering it to you five days a week ratherthan six.

It is no secret the newspaper industry has struggled in recentyears, just as other industries have also faced challenges. But tomeet those challenges, one must adapt. So we are adapting.

But despite those challenges, we have seen continued strongreadership in both of our print edition and our online edition.Combined, readership is stronger than ever before.

Our news staff spends its time conducting interviews forstories, covering countless public meetings – not just the hotissues, but also the tedious budget sessions and mundane policyreviews. Our production staff takes that information and producesyour newspaper, which is then delivered to your doorstep.

While our subscription rate will remain at $10 per month we willbe making adjustments for those office pay subscribers with advancepayment subscriptions, so you will get the same number of issuesyou originally paid for. We will extend your subscription one dayfor each week remaining on your office pay subscription.

Since adding a Sunday edition in 1995, the Monday edition hasalways been a stretch to our resources and as the economy soured inthe past few years it became harder to financially justify theMonday edition, and thus a very hard decision was made.

We hope our readers will understand and we think they will. Weare still the same locally owned newspaper we have always been,printed here in Brookhaven, on our own color presses, edited,produced and distributed by approximately 65 very dedicated localindividuals, all of whom call this area their home.

As I told our staff last week, sometimes taking a step back isneeded to take a step forward. As this area weathers the stormclouds of the BP oil spill and the troubling economy, we need tokeep in mind that a lot of positive things are happening in thisarea, including a number of new retail stores that have opened inrecent months and several developments in industrial prospects thatmay mean more jobs in the future, all of which will allow this areato bounce back quickly.

We are just positioning ourselves to be ready to better tellthat story tomorrow and for years to come.

Write to Bill Jacobs at P.O. Box 551, Brookhaven MS 39602,or send e-mail to bjacobs@dailyleader.com.