Dear readers,

We wanted to let you know of two upcoming changes at the Independent that will impact when and how your daily news is delivered to your homes.

The Independent will become a five-day publication starting in May. The Independent will print and distribute on a Tuesday through Saturday schedule.

The other change beginning in May is the Independent will use the U.S. Postal Service to deliver its newspapers to all of its subscribers. The postal service will deliver your newspaper when it delivers your mail. Once this change is made the Independent will cease printing a newspaper on federal postal holidays.

Also, by allowing the postal service to handle delivery, we can focus more of our resources on continuing to reliably gather and deliver the most important community news and unique stories to our readers in Marshall and the surrounding communities that we serve. Our mission is to provide community-focused news to our region.

We know that reading your newspaper on a timely basis is important. Every subscriber to the Independent can read the online edition as early as 4 a.m. on their favorite device. Subscribers simply need to go the Independent’s website and validate their subscription status. Once you have completed this process you can read the online edition which is an exact duplicate of your printed edition. If you need assistance with this you can call the Independent and a staff member can assist you.

These changes will not alter our commitment to covering the community. Reporters and editors will continue to work seven days a week covering the stories that matter. But on days without a print edition, their coverage will appear online first. Remember — if you’re a print subscriber you automatically get full access to all the news, features, sports and opinion content at www.marshallindependent.com.

All of us at the Independent are proud to do this important work — to serve our communities with our reporting on everything from local government meetings to annual events to heartwarming or interesting stories about the people who choose to call southwest Minnesota their home.

Change takes some getting used to, but these moves will put us in the best position to continue our work and continue our service to you, our readers, and to the communities in which we live and work.

Lastly, to you, our readers, we want to thank you for continuing to subscribe to your local newspaper.

We look forward to continuing our service to you.

Grant Gibbons, Publisher