THE St George and Sutherland Shire Leader will become a weekly publication on December 16.
The decision to consolidate the Tuesday and Thursday editions into one, bigger edition was not made lightly.
Key stakeholders were consulted and, after a review of our production and delivery systems, it was felt a weekly print publication would best serve the needs of our advertisers and readers while allowing us to focus more resources on a bigger edition, our website and social media platforms.
All your favourite sections — news, sport, Your View, Zest, Your Home, Drive, Domain and Classifieds — will be consolidated into the Wednesday print publication.
There will still be separate editions for Sutherland Shire and St George.
The Leader aims to stay at the forefront of local news provision and will up the volume of daily online content while still providing news to our traditional readers in a format they have grown to love.
In the new year the Leader will switch to a new operating system, with greater automation, to allow our editorial team to break more stories on our award-winning website and then follow up with a curated collection for our newspaper editions.
For many of our readers it will seem strange not getting the Leader home-delivered twice a week.
But some of our older readers will remember that the Leader began life as a Wednesday newspaper on June 29, 1960.
It remained so until 1984, when the demand for advertising and news space forced the Leader to become a twice-weekly publication to accommodate the volume of material.
The 1990s saw the introduction of full colour production in the Leader, probably the first community newspaper in Australia to provide colour on all pages, which also spurred its growth.
It has been this ability to move with the times and adopt new technologies that has helped the Leader win many industry awards during its proud history, including being judged Australian Community Newspaper of the Year for the past three years.
And now, as we continue our journey through the digital age, we hope to faithfully serve this wonderful community for another 55 years.