In the upcoming Saturday, Sept. 8, edition, The Post-Searchlight will be launching its first major redesign in more than three years. We will continue to provide our readers with excellent news reporting and photography, and now we will be able to do so in a more visibly-pleasing way.

It’s hard to detail all of the changes that you will see in Saturday’s paper, but here are a few of the highlights. First, you will notice an improvement in our headline fonts, which will be larger and more eye-catching, and help to differentiate between stories on the page. You will also see a change in the main story font of the newspaper, which will be much easier to read and will also be more attractive on the printed page. Finally, stories and photos will be separated by larger amounts of space, to prevent pages from looking overly cluttered or messy.

However, the changes will not only entail the look of the paper. We have also made some improvements to the general organization of our content. For example, every Wednesday edition will soon feature an “Education” page every issue, and either an “Agriculture” or “Health” page. These pages will feature only stories, columns and photos on that particular subject. We hope that this will allow us to focus our content on subject areas that are especially important to our readers. This does not mean that only education news will run on that special page; certainly there will be times when education news (or agriculture news, or health news, or business news, etc.) warrants Page 1A coverage. However, it does mean that there will only be education-based news on that page, making it easier for readers to find what they’re looking for.

We will also be running a regular calendar, and it will always be on Page 2A. This calendar will feature not only regular events, but also church-related events, and it will be separated by day. This will make it easier for readers to see exactly what is going on in town throughout the week. We will also start a new “Around the Region” feature, which will include small news briefs on what’s going on in our surrounding counties.

Page 8A will be the new home of our records page, which will always include obituaries and the arrest report. It will also be the place to find other important public records, when they become available, including restaurant inspection scores, marriages, land transactions, and more. We realize that readers might be initially confused, because obituaries have always been located on Page 6A, but we believe it will eventually become second-nature to turn to Page 8A for obituaries and other records.

We also hope our readers will enjoy the new “Your Neighbor” and “Athlete of the Week” features, where we will feature at least two members of the community — one citizen and one local athlete — in every upcoming edition.

Certainly no redesign is perfect, and there will be bumps in the road as we work to improve and update your newspaper both now and in the future. Please feel free to let us know what you think about the redesign, or any ideas you may have to further improve your paper. Email me at justin.schuver@thepostsearchlight.com or call (229) 246-7665. As always, thanks for reading The Post-Searchlight and thanks for helping us make it the best newspaper that it can be.

Justin Schuver is the managing editor of The Post-Searchlight. You can email him at justin.schuver@thepostsearchlight.com.