If you’ve followed economic news of late, you’ve no doubt noticed that newspapers have had a tough couple of years.

Leader Publications, which produces the Niles Daily Star, Dowagiac Daily News, Edwardsburg Argus, Cassopolis Vigilant, Off the Water and The Leader, has fared relatively well during the recession, but like all businesses, we’ve had to get creative in keeping our costs down.

In January, we began looking at solutions to reduce our substantial delivery expenses, with three goals in mind:

• We refused to make any changes that would negatively impact our ability to keep local residents informed of important news.

• We refused to make any changes that would increase subscription or advertising costs. I think most people would agree that the midst of a recession is a bad time to increase costs for anyone, be they readers or advertisers.

• As we have in the last 18 months, we resisted making any changes that would require eliminating staff members.

Beginning with the May 3 issues of the Niles Daily Star and the Dowagiac Daily News, you will receive your copy by mail on the same day you would normally receive it.

Under the new system, you will still get Monday’s government and breaking news as well as Monday night’s sports on Tuesday, just as you always have. You will still pay the same amount for a subscription as you always have. You will still get all of the inserts you always have.

The only difference you’ll see is that it will be in your mailbox instead of your Leader box, and most readers will actually get the paper earlier in the day.

We are changing our production schedule around, printing the paper late at night instead of early in the morning, in order to deliver the newspaper to you on the same day you’re used to receiving it, and with the same content. We used this system up until the early ’90s, and, as I noted before, this move will allow us to avoid increasing the cost of a subscription.

There are four holidays throughout the year on which the postal service doesn’t deliver and that we currently do. We will not be publishing papers on those days, and if you are a subscriber, your account will automatically be credited and extended. We apologize for any inconvenience those four lost days may cause.

For readers of the Niles Daily Star, you may worry about recent news that the postal service would like to cease delivering mail on Saturdays. While it is far from 100 percent certain that this will happen, in the event it does, it will be sometime in 2011. As of now, the postal carriers’ unions are dead-set against dropping Saturday delivery, as are we. The proposal is also not gaining much momentum in Congress, which ultimately has the final say.

If, however, the postal service does drop Saturday delivery, we will still produce and deliver local news to homes on Saturdays.

We regret that this change will impact several independent carriers who have faithfully delivered the Star and the News for years, but most will still continue to carry other products for us.

We notified our carriers a month ago of the change to allow those who needed to find other sources of income to do so. We also recently added a new weekly newspaper for the Lake Michigan shore communities, which independent contractors continue to carry for us, and of course our weekly shoppers’ guide, The Leader, is 100 percent home-delivered by independent contractors.

This has been a difficult decision for us, and I understand that not everyone will agree with the change. However, we wanted to make necessary cost reductions in a way that would insure a healthy and long future for our company and our more than 40 employees, and a healthy and long future of producing and delivering local news to the communities we have served since 1872.

If you have any questions or comments about the change, you are welcome to e-mail or call me.

My e-mail address is bryan.clapper@leaderpub.com and my direct phone line is (269) 687-7700.

In the meantime, please enjoy the Star and News as you always have.