It should come as a surprise to no one that the newspaper industry has been in a state of constant change for decades. The role of the local newspaper as the medium of choice for both news consumers and advertisers has been diminished, and we’re faced with tough decisions every day of how best to continue to serve both to the best of our abilities.

Since I joined Leader Publications nearly three years ago, our focus has been on diversifying our product offerings to best suit the changing needs of both our readers and our advertisers. Our small staff publishes a dizzying array of products; our five-person editorial team, for example, produces nearly all of the content for the Niles Daily Star, the Dowagiac Daily News, the Edwardsburg Argus and the Cassopolis Vigilant. In the last two years, they’ve taken on additional editorial work in the forms of the new weekly newspaper we launched, Off the Water, which serves our local lakeshore communities; a new quarterly magazine, Third Coast Living; and managing the content on our five news websites.

From a business standpoint, the additional products and the diversification they offer have allowed us better stability, which in turn has allowed us to add editorial staff, even as our industry has shed thousands of journalists from its ranks — including journalists from other local papers. But with the economy in its current state, and with rising costs everywhere in our business, we’re just about at our staffing limit.

In other words, it’s been a double-edged sword: either add products, and thereby increase individual workload; or cut newsroom jobs. We’ve chosen to increase workload, and our truly talented and dedicated staff of journalists has taken it all in stride and done a remarkable job considering the constraints placed on them by our changing market.

With increased workload, however, we need to focus on managing where our time is spent, and even before we added these new products, I identified our editorial pages in the Star and the News as “weak links.” This is not to say that any one person was to blame; rather with so many things to do, the editorial page has often been an after-thought.

I believe strongly in the power of a newspaper’s editorial voice. So does our company — in fact, our owner’s father won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in the 1940s. However, a staff of five producing 13 editorial pages a week cannot possibly invest the time necessary to make each of those pages truly the best they can be. I’ve also been disappointed over the years by the lack of space we’ve had dedicated to letters to the editor, which I believe are essential to community dialogue and debate.

So, starting with today’s two-page editorial spread, readers of the Star and the News will see a much better editorial “section,” albeit only once a week. As you can see, we’ve invested time and put thought into making sure we’re producing one stellar editorial section each week, rather than five or six mediocre pages.

Here’s what you can expect each Thursday:

• A strong, well-researched staff editorial focused on a local topic.

• A rotating staff column — and our writers have been instructed to be compelling, thought-provoking and as opinionated as possible.

• A local “by the numbers” piece, exploring and relaying interesting local statistics.

• Much more space for readers’ comments, both in the form of letters to the editor and online comments

• More interaction with readers in the form of a weekly poll that you can take online on any of our news websites.

I encourage you to share your thoughts — good AND bad — with us regarding this change. You can e-mail me at bryan.clapper@leaderpub.com, submit a letter to the editor for publication or comment on the story online. A strong editorial section is about shaping and informing public discussion.

Bryan Clapper is the publisher of Leader Publications.