First things first: We are extremely grateful for your being a reader of the newspaper. Please accept our genuine thanks!
If you don’t know, the Delaware State News will soon change in two significant ways.
As of July 1, the newspaper’s format will shift, and it will be printed with a smaller page size. The depth of the page will go from about 15 inches to about 12 inches.
Then, on July 2, the paper will adopt a new publishing schedule, when the paper will be printed and distributed Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Both steps are largely a consequence of unbridled inflation, which has driven up the cost of paper by more than 45% since December 2020. In addition, during the last 12 months, the chemically sensitive aluminum plates used on our press to transfer text and images to paper have climbed 18%, ink is up 13%, the cost of labor has soared by 25%, and, of course, gasoline has increased nearly 50%.
Admittedly, these two steps are big changes, but we are taking them to help nullify the extravagant cost of newsprint and to ensure we can continue our tradition of focused local coverage, watchdog journalism, and unabashedly reporting the good news from our community.
Our newsroom now consists of 17 staffers, the most we have had in 10 years, and they will continue to publish your news seven days a week on our website, BayToBayNews.com. We will also continue to offer 10 free email newsletters, a list we plan to expand in coming months.
Change always has been in the DNA of newspaper publishing.
Like many of you, I am old enough to recall when most cities had both a morning and an evening paper. In many cities, both the morning and evening papers had multiple editions. Now, more and more often, cities no longer have a newspaper at all.
And deliberate evolutionary change has always been part of the Delaware State News. In 1953, the paper converted from a once a week schedule to five days a week, delivered in the afternoon.
Then, in 1971, the paper changed to morning delivery and a Sunday edition was added; a Saturday edition followed in 1983.
For years, we also published an entirely separate edition of the State News for distribution in nearby Maryland counties.
In 2009, the paper was converted from a “broadsheet” format to a “compact” format (which we will reintroduce on July 1), and in 2017, the paper adopted its current format, with a 15-inch deep page.
Along the way, in 1997, we launched our first website, www.newszap.com.
Every single one of these changes aimed to undergird the longevity of the newspaper, so that we could continue our style of impartial, fair, and balanced journalism. We believe this endeavor is of the utmost importance to our community, and our goal is to make certain our vital work continues long into the future.
Change naturally produces questions. Since announcing our plans two weeks ago, many of you have contacted us either through email or our telephone hotline. You asked many good questions, and we are committed to answering each one as well as we can.
Here is a sampling of your comments and questions:
Does moving to a five-day-a-week publishing schedule come with a reduction in current subscription rates?
No. We are downscaling print distribution to avoid radically raising your subscription rates for home delivery. We settled on the new publishing schedule after carefully weighing our costs to print and deliver Saturday and Monday against the revenue produced from advertising, subscriptions, and newsstand purchases.
During this inflationary time, you will not see a rise in your subscription rates. The cost for a subscription to the Delaware State News, depending on your plan, will remain $21.99 per month to $257.99 per year, keeping our home-delivery rates among the lowest in the entire nation.
Many of you recognize this as a very positive consequence and thanked us for not raising subscription rates. Others have questions.
If you are among those with questions about your rate or your plan, please call customer service at (302) 741-8298 or email
customerservice@iniusa.org.
I have come to rely on your news every day. How will I keep up?
Use our digital products. We will continue to publish every day of the week and intentionally concentrate on becoming a more digitally focused organization. Our digital products include our website – BayToBayNews.com; the eEdition, an online digital replica of the Delaware State News; 10 free emailed newsletters; and apps for both the newspaper and the website, which provide real-time alerts for breaking news.
As part of the transition and as added value, each paying subscriber will receive free access to our eEdition for as long as your subscription continues, along with a free one-year membership to BayToBayNews.com.
If I don’t use the Internet often, how am I going to take advantage of the website and eEdition?
We will help you access both the website and the eEdition. We now have two videos in production that will provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to create an account and visit the website and/or the eEdition.
More to come soon on these videos.
Why not cut from your upper level administration, rather than reduce the frequency of print?
Our company, Independent Newsmedia Inc. USA, has very little administrative overhead. Our mission is to practice journalism as a public trust, with a commitment to citizen participation, free speech, and independent journalism. In all our reporting, we pursue the idea of purposeful neutrality.
In 1991, after a private ruling from the Internal Revenue Service, Joe Smyth, then the owner of the company, transferred all ownership to a nonprofit holding company.
INI is a normal for-profit company that pays taxes the same as any other for-profit company. It does not pay dividends to any individuals or groups, however, since it is 100% owned by INI Holdings, Inc., the nonprofit membership corporation established in 1991.
We have five nonprofit trustees who serve staggered five-year terms, with a new trustee being elected each year.
Our trustees pledge to uphold the corporation’s articles and bylaws, to act as guardians of its purposes, and to perpetuate the tradition of allowing all after-tax profits to be reinvested in pursuit of the operating company’s journalistic mission. Other than receiving a modest honorarium for attending the annual meeting, they pledge not to benefit personally.
Because of our mission, our company has neither a chief financial officer nor a general counsel; our resources are focused on producing quality media and improving our journalism.
The Internet is not for me. All I want is print.
Print is not dead – by a longshot. Rather than bemoaning the loss of Saturday and Monday, our entire team – from the newsroom to the marketing and distribution departments – are focusing on the positives of the new publishing schedule.
The State News was recently named News Organization of the Year by the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association. We are both proud and humbled by this recognition from our peers. Our goal is to repeat as winners of this award year after year.
To do this, we plan to publish more relevant news than ever before, using our digital and print products, and to continue to expand our newsroom staff. With more time, our editors and reporters will be able to dig deeper into stories that matter the most.
The new schedule will allow us to produce a better, more community focused newspaper. Our award-winning journalists will double-down on their efforts to offer indispensable coverage of our area by concentrating on original initiatives and reporting. Our reporters and editors are singularly committed to producing stories that count, based on practicing high-integrity, nonpartisan, independent journalism.
What is the plan for the puzzles that appear in the newspaper?
Make no mistake: We grasp the importance of our puzzles to our readers. Questions about how we plan to handle publishing our puzzles were among the very first we received.
Puzzle devotees share three main concerns:
First, they do not want to see the Saturday puzzles disappear, since the puzzles grow more difficult, starting with the easiest ones on Monday and ending the week on Sunday with the most difficult ones. Our plan, at this point, is to run two pages of puzzles on Friday – one for Friday and a second with the Saturday puzzles.
The second concern from our puzzle enthusiasts is where and when will they find the answers to the Friday and Saturday puzzles. The solutions to Friday’s puzzles will appear with the Saturday puzzles on the second page of puzzles in Friday’s paper. The answers to Saturday’s puzzles will appear in Tuesday’s paper with that day’s puzzles.
Concern number three relates to the size of the puzzles. Some are, according to our readers, too small. We agree and will work on finding a way to enlarge the puzzles without eliminating any of them.
What is the plan for the comics?
Comics are sacred to lots of our readers. Many habitual newspaper readers – like me – first got hooked as youngsters by reading the “funnies.”
Our plan will concentrate on the strips with a continuous story line. So, for example, on Fridays we will publish both the Friday and the Saturday strips for Peanuts, so we can follow sequentially the adventures of Charlie Brown and Lucy Van Pelt and continue to keep up with Snoopy’s sage musings. Then, on Tuesdays, we would double-up again by publishing Monday’s strip with Tuesday’s version.
We are also evaluating our current list of comic strips and hope to refresh our lineup soon with a new strip or two and perhaps, even, add back an old favorite.
That’s it for now.
If you have other questions, we encourage you to contact us. Call the DSN Hotline at (302) 608-0062 to leave a comment or question. Or you can email us at dsnhotline@iniusa.org.
Please know we are genuinely grateful for every subscriber and reader, whether in print or online, and we thank each of you for your extraordinary loyalty, for sticking with and supporting the newspaper and its digital media as they have evolved and will continue to evolve long into the future.
Darel La Prade is group publisher for INI Delmarva. Besides the Delaware State News and BayToBayNews.com, the group includes three weekly newspapers in Maryland, a fourth weekly in Delaware, and three monthly newspapers that cover Smyrna, Milford and Georgetown-Millsboro.
