As mentioned on February 16, 2024, and March 8, 2024, our home delivery service is nearly here. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, we’ll start Home Delivery in some areas on April 12th, adding routes as rapidly as possible.
Many people don’t know that very soon (our target is no later than May 20th, likely MUCH earlier), the Gazette will be changing to twice per week. The current paper will still be published on Fridays and will be called the Weekend Edition. The new edition will be published on Mondays and will be the Weekday Edition. Due to the postal service not operating on Sunday, all papers for the Weekday edition will go to sorting on Monday, and most will get their papers on Tuesday or Wednesday.
The pricing of the paper is based on a 16-20-page paper, and we’re bumping our heads against that. Adding a weekday version of the paper helps bring the paper in line with costs and also means that news is more relevant. This also allows for more responsiveness to last-minute notices and announcements. It also means that we will be able to have more regional and state news, although our focus is still primarily on our local city and surrounding areas. We have shown that by keeping a local-centric focal point, we can succeed where many people have thought that we would fail. We’re very excited about this next step forward for the printed press in Central Montana.
There will be little change for the Weekend edition (Friday). Stories will be fresher and more timely. The biggest change is that our deadline for press will be Wednesdays at 5 p.m. instead of Wednesdays at noon. Advertising and announcement deadlines will remain on Tuesday at 5 p.m. for the Weekend edition.
The Weekday Edition (Monday) will have the following deadlines: The Editorial Deadline will be Saturday at 5 p.m. Advertising and Notices MUST be in by 5 p.m. on Friday. If they require production, they should be in no later than Thursday and must be in at least a week ahead of the ad deadline to be guaranteed a space in the paper.
For those who wish to have BOTH editions of the paper, we will redistribute your remaining subscription to cover both papers. Additionally, you will receive some additional papers to bring you in line with the subscription price (You’ll pay the same as if you had subscribed to both days, as there is a discount on ordering both). Our Rack Locations will get the new paper for each edition. Rack locations MAY keep the previous day’s paper and the current one so that if you miss getting a paper, it’s available for an extra few days.
Once we start our Home deliveries, we’ll start releasing pricing and taking orders for the new edition. Because the Home Deliveries and the second paper each week are big steps, we’re allowing one to get going before pushing hard on the other.
Lastly, we’re very excited about moving into our new office. While it’s small, even an acorn starts out as a little nut. As of this writing, we expect to start moving on April 1st and have our office open to the public by the 8th. The location of the new office is 1601 2nd Ave N. Ste 345. This is the Columbus Center, and we’re really excited to be moving into this historic building.
Author: Andy Anderson
Andy is publisher of Foxys Publishing Co, as well as pressman, ad sales, distribution and sometime janitor. He occasionally makes a wild attempt at writing but quite often is seen running around our offices trying to "Get 39 million things done today..."
