Tonight, we won't be running the presses at the Idaho Statesman. Beginning with Monday's newspaper, we're printing in Nampa, at the Idaho Press-Tribune, one of many changes we are making to respond creatively to the challenging times newspapers are facing.

Many of us today are facing tougher economic times. We in the newspaper business are in a particularly difficult position, the result of the steeper-than-expected downturn hitting some of our key advertisers (real estate brokers, car dealers, major department stores, employers who are hiring) and a transformational change in our industry as we become a multimedia provider of news and information.

Many stories have been written about what's happening in the news industry. I won't go into all that here. What's important is how we're responding and how that affects your newspaper, whether you read us in print or online. We're pretty excited about many of the changes.

The new paper you will see Monday morning is the result of the series of cuts we have made over the last 18 months, in space and people, including reporters, photographers and editors.

But it's also the result of a year-long innovation process the paper undertook last March and a commitment we have held dear - to tell the stories of this place that share who we are, what we value and how we will ensure this remains a good, safe, honest place to live.

Every change, every cut, every innovation is judged by how it helps or hurts our ability to provide strong public service journalism that serves our communities. But we are focusing our journalistic efforts on what we can provide that isn't readily available elsewhere.

I hope you find lots to like in the changes we've made. I hope you can be understanding of the ones you don't like. (We don't like some of them, either.)

The biggest changes are:

1Our creative decision to partner with the Idaho Press-Tribune to print our newspaper. We had ancient presses, damaged by two fires, and no hope of being able to invest tens of millions in new ones any time soon. The IPT has presses that are 6 years old and willingly invested in new printing equipment to make this partnership work. The IPT hired our former production director Roger Stowell to run its expanded pressroom.

We've seen a test run of our paper. The color is crisp, the black really black, the colors vibrant, and one page doesn't smudge onto another. The number of color pages available on the Statesman's presses has constrained us - and our advertisers - for years. No more.

Printing remotely is not technically difficult, but changing how we put our paper together and deliver it was a complex undertaking. We've been working on it since September when we announced our partnership. In November, we moved to distribution centers, a key component of our new delivery system, and we've got all the bugs worked out. We're proud to say we have our lowest complaint rate for newspaper delivery in years.

It also required us to change the size of our paper. Our pages will be 1 inch narrower and about 2 inches shorter, the emerging industry standard, the same size as USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. And we did have to rethink the organization of our paper. While we will be able to print more pages at once, with lots more color, we can print no more than three sections at a time.

Bottom line: This partnership, forged by difficult economic times, is simply a good deal for the Idaho Press-Tribune, us, our readers and our advertisers.

2Our transformed Life and Marketplace section. Get details at the bottom of Insight 1.

3A streamlined newspaper with lots of new features for busy readers. We put a premium on doing things that will save readers time and money.

We've also rethought how we can help you get information quickly from the paper. We've spent a lot of time thinking about how to write headlines, news summaries and stories so we can eliminate duplication and tell you quickly what you need to know to decide whether you want to read a story.

OTHER CHANGES

We've also made a number of other improvements:

A stand-alone Friday Life section, instead of putting the features content in the back of Scene.

The return of the popular "In Remembrance" feature celebrating the life of a person who has died.

Slightly bigger comics and some changes that reflect reader favorites (and least favorites). As a result of a reader survey, we're bringing back Shoe and getting rid of Elderberries.

A refreshed weather page with a better regional map and daily morning/noon/night forecasts.

Digital channels in our daily TV grid, because that's one of the most frequent requests we hear from readers.

COMING SOON

And we have a few more improvements coming later this month or next, including:

A redesigned, more elegant obituaries section with an easier-to-read type font and opportunities for color and larger photos.

An advertising directory to put a spotlight on the local businesses that have advertisements throughout our newspaper.

CAN'T FIND WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR?

It's a lot of moving parts. We hope this column helps you get ready for the changes. To further help, we will be providing the following:

A reader's guide that will be delivered with the first "new paper" on Monday, March 2. We hope you will save this and refer to it as you get used to the new paper.

A daily guide, running on Page A2 for the next two weeks, that will detail how to navigate the new paper.

A guide to the new paper online, with a detailed list of questions and answers that we think you might have about the changes. It's at IdahoStatesman.com/newpaper. And while you're on our Web site, take a look at the changes we made Friday. We made some key changes to improve how it works, too.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

As always, we are interested in what you think. I, publisher Mi-Ai Parrish and managing editor Bill Manny will be available to answer questions starting at 9 a.m. Monday. Please call us at 373-6612, or e-mail us at vgowler@idahostatesman.com, mparrish@idahostatesman.com and bmanny@idahostatesman.com.