You hold in your hands right now a collector’s item of sorts.

It’s the last newspaper under the Times’ five-day daily publication cycle.

Come Wednesday, Feb. 4, you’ll wake up to the next edition of the Demopolis Times and boy, are you in for a surprise.

Gone will be the Tuesday, Thursday and Friday editions. We will return to a print distribution cycle of Wednesday and Saturday. The Times was a twice-weekly newspaper in 2003.

When the decision was made to give the readers what they wanted – their twice-weekly newspaper back – we decided that if this was a gift, we wanted to wrap it.

The first edition, which hits newsstands Wednesday, will have a clean, modern look. It will be slam full of content, and everyone at the Times is excited at what we’re going to unleash on our readers and advertisers next week.

Along with the new look, the new content and the new distribution cycle comes a new delivery method.

Effective next week, your Demopolis Times will be delivered via mail.

Hopefully, those of you who experienced sporadic delivery issues will see those dissolved.

This will not impact current paid subscribers. Your subscription has already been extended so that you will receive everything you’ve already paid for.

Furthermore, there won’t be any rate increases to receive the newspaper in the mail.

In fact, the annual subscription rate has been reduced to $52.

As an introduction to our newspaper, we’re offering a buy-one-get-one special.

You can purchase a six-month subscription to the Demopolis Times for $32.70, and you can give another six-month subscription to a current non-subscriber for free.

So, for those of you who are reading this column in a newspaper from one of our newsstands, give home delivery a try.

There’s never been a better time. And for those of you who are reading this over the Internet, pick up a printed edition at home and see what you’ve been missing.

There’s never been a better time to read the “newspaper of the people” serving the “City of the People.”

These are exciting times at the Demopolis Times and we hope you’ll be part of them.

Note: Jason Cannon is publisher of the Demopolis Times.