Serving a community for over 130 years means growing and changing with the community. When the Glenwood Post first published, there was media but no social media. There was transit but not mass transit. There were roads but no highways or interstates. There was communication but not instantaneous communication.

In the years since, the world has changed, and so has the landscape for news organizations like us. Publishing digitally has given us new opportunities to connect with our readers and grow.

Even as people continue to pick up our print newspapers at a healthy pace, our reach and readership has grown significantly thanks to our website, postindependent.com. More and more people are in the habit of going to our website for the most current headlines and stories rather than waiting to see what comes out in print three days a week or once a week for the Citizen Telegram.

This shift in how our audience reaches our news (and connects with local advertisers for goods and services) is why we’re changing our print newspaper frequency. 

• Beginning the week of Nov. 3, the Post Independent will shift from publishing three days a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday to two days a week: Tuesday and Friday. 
• The Citizen Telegram will remain a separate paper but will be distributed on Tuesdays as an insert within the PI for New Castle, Silt and Rifle.

We know this is a big change for our readers, especially for those of you who have been with us for decades and love the ritual of picking up a paper copy of our newspaper. I’m also a big fan of physical print: my love of journalism started with reading the comics, “Odds and Ends” by LM Boyd and the local opinion section (that last one was thanks to my dad) in my hometown newspaper, the Casper Star-Tribune.

This is a change that we believe will help ensure we continue to serve both our print and digital readers for years to come. The reality is the costs of producing a print newspaper has gone up considerably more than what it was even five years ago. It’s not just a matter of print and ink, either: distributing a newspaper is a challenge in any community but adding Rocky Mountain winters to the mix means delivery drivers face considerable risk (along with rising fleet insurance and maintenance costs) in getting the papers to our communities.

We’ll also be asking readers to create an account and login to be able to read unlimited stories on our site. If you visit us just a few times a month, you’ll likely never see the prompt to create an account. But if you’re a habitual reader, you’ll be asked to login after reading enough stories. There’s no cost to accessing our stories, and the benefit to us is it will empower us even more than before to know which stories in particular are of most interest to our local online audience. That’s incredibly helpful to our newsroom of three reporters and managing editor in knowing which stories they should focus on.

Finally, I want to say thank you. 

News has changed so much since I first took a photo for my high school newspaper in 2000. But you, our Garfield County readers, have done so much more than just stick with us through the changes. You’ve shared your success with your friends and neighbors in our pages and on our website, you’ve challenged us to always strive to be better and you’ve grown with us. We wouldn’t be able to be here without you, and we thank you so much for the privilege to serve as your Garfield County news source.

Peter Baumann is publisher/editor of the Post Independent and Citizen Telegram.

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