Columbia Basin Herald offers Sunday edition

COLUMBIA BASIN - For the first time, Basin residents will get their Columbia Basin Herald for one more day this weekend.

The newspaper offers its first Sunday edition, Publisher Harlan Beagley explained.

"We're guaranteeing porch delivery by 5 a.m.," he said. "In the 66 years this newspaper has been publishing, this will be the first Sunday edition."

People may have noticed in the last two years the familiar green Columbia Basin Herald newsstands have begun to turn blue.

"As we've been replacing those and buying new ones, we've done that with a Sunday paper in mind, because they'll have a Sunday mechanism," Beagley said. "We're very proud of those racks. Those racks are expensive. They cost somewhere between $600 and $700, so it takes a while to add that to our inventory. We've got probably 110 of those things."

It's quite an undertaking to produce a Sunday paper, Beagley said, because oftentimes that is the most involved issue of the week. The newspaper traditionally offers a weekend edition in its Friday newspaper, which includes many of the things readers would find in certain Sunday papers.

"In the upcoming Sunday paper, we would like a lot of feedback," Beagley said. "This first edition will be our best efforts to put forth what we think people might want to read in a Sunday paper."

Included with the paper will be a questionnaire survey allowing readers to say what they like and dislike about the special edition.

"The answers on that survey will help shape future Sunday newspapers," Beagley said. "There has yet to be a date set for the future Sunday papers. Once we gather this data, it will give us cost and content feedback. Then we will take that information under advisement."

A Sunday newspaper is something most people want in the Columbia Basin, he said.

"I believe that because I hear it a lot," Beagley said. "People tell me they would really like to see a Sunday edition added to our subscription. The most important thing to me is people remember to go out to their newspaper box Sunday."

Some carriers may elect to deliver the paper the evening before, he noted.

"We're trying to make this as easy on the carriers as possible, so we're going to print (the special edition) as quickly that day as possible," he said.