“The times they are a chang’n.” At least on the community pages at the Times-Herald.

For years we’ve offered the Community Events calendar in Saturday’s paper, where we’ve tried to list all the activities coming up for the week from around the area. It’s not always been easy, but we’ve tried.

Starting Monday, readers will find a daily calendar which will include the next day’s events. We’ll be running that each day with Saturday’s paper containing both Sunday and Monday events.

The change will free up some much-needed room on Saturday’s community pages, incorporate the support groups list and allow clubs and organizations a little more time to get their news items to the paper. Items for the calendar will be due by noon the day before the event is to be published, except for Sunday and Monday items which are due by noon Friday.

Another change involves engagements. In the past, we’ve grouped all the engagements in the Saturday paper. This is fine most Saturdays, but on some days, there can be as many as 10 engagements, especially in the spring, making getting in all the news of who’s getting married a real challenge.

From now on, engagements — along with weddings, anniversaries and births — will be in the daily papers, as room permits. We’ll still be sure to get the engagements published in a timely fashion.

That reminds me of a complaint I often have to field — the timeliness of putting articles in the paper. In the case of Needs To Know on the front page, I don’t like to put an item in until the week the event will occur, unless there is a deadline for someone to buy tickets or sign up for a class. Since these items can only be run once (due to space limitations), putting them in too early often leads to people forgetting when they will happen.

But another thing that rules where an article is placed in the newspaper is size. Not just of the article, but size of the space on the page.

Readers will bring or send in an article and ask for a specific date. We simply can’t promise that any particular article will be published on any particular day. If you want that kind of control, you’ll have to purchase advertising space. That puts the buyer in control. We do try to accommodate our readers and will do our best to have the article in when asked, but sometimes space doesn’t allow it.

Another change you may have noticed is the moving of school news to the community pages. Academic items will also be run all week long. Eliminating the Academically Speaking page has left the list of scholarships available at Washington High School in limbo. The scholarship list has found a new home on the Internet on our Web site at www.washtimesherald.com.

To put an item on the community page, in the daily calendar or in Need To Know, e-mail me at pmorrison@washtimesherald.com, mail to P.O. Box 471, Washington IN 47501, or bring to the office at 102 E. VanTrees St.

n Pat Morrison is grandmother to four beautiful grandchildren, but she also adores her dog, Katie, and cat, Kitty Wizard.