To better carry Register readers through the weekend, the Register will begin a weekend edition starting July 9.
The Friday-Saturday edition will be called The Weekender.
The news portion will include weddings and engagements, Thursday and Friday sporting events, court news, the NASCAR page, obituaries and editorials and columns — everything typically run over the course of a Friday and Saturday paper with the additional space to allow for more in-depth stories.
The TV guide will revert to Thursday’s edition.
The advertising portion of The Weekender will include inserts from area advertisers, garage sale alerts and employment ads.
The change to the weekend edition means the elimination of the Friday publication.
“Reader response tells us that most people would rather have a meatier newspaper on Saturday mornings when they have the time to enjoy it,” said Susan Lynn, Register editor and publisher.
“For forever, the Saturday paper has been published on Friday nights, sometimes in just a matter of a few hours after Friday’s paper has gone to press,” Lynn said. “That has not allowed for much of a Saturday paper.”
Does the move save the Register money?
“Absolutely,” said Lynn. “But only through the distribution side. We’ll still have as much news that we did with the combined Friday and Saturday newspapers. It doesn’t mean any reduction in staff. Our office will be open five days a week.
“The savings will be realized on delivery either by mail or by carriers to our rural and out-of-town customers.
“With the price of fuel remaining high, we’re having to look at ways to cut costs,” Lynn said. The Register is delivered to 492 individual rural households and another 455 papers are distributed to convenience stores across the county. Its total paper circulation hovers around 3,100. Another 67 subscribers take the Register by online only.
Along with the change comes an increase in the cost of a single paper.
“It’s been 20 years that the Register went from 35 cents to 50 cents,” for copies purchased individually, Lynn said. “We’re raising that to 75 cents — still less than the price of a candy bar — and hopefully more satisfying.”
Subscriptions to the Register will remain the same, Lynn said, reflecting an even greater bargain for those who have it delivered or receive it by mail.
The other change is that for those who want to run three-day classified ads, they must be submitted by 2 p.m. Tuesday, and will run in the Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday editions.

A number of celebrations will fill the sky with colorful explosions over the holiday weekend.
There’s plenty on the ground to keep folks occupied as well.
The Iola Elks will celebrate Independence Day on Monday with a youth fishing tournament at Elks Lake starting at 9 a.m. Registration begins at 8, and lunch will be served afterward. Older fishermen will cast their lines throughout the afternoon in a carp tournament.
 The Elks fireworks extravaganza starts shortly after dusk. The lake is open to the public all day.
Gerry Diltz, proprietor of Black Cat Fireworks in Gas, will for the 29th consecutive year treat the community to a fireworks show Monday at dusk.
The fireworks will be lighted near Crossroads Learning Center and is visible for miles around.
Humboldt’s annual Mike Rickner Memorial Fireworks Show begins at dusk Sunday. Model airplane enthusiasts will fly their models at about 7 p.m. at the Humboldt Municipal Golf Course.
Elsmore’s Independence Day celebration also is Sunday evening. Beginning at 6:30 p.m. a dinner featuring pork burgers, hamburgers, hot dogs and Polish sausages will be served. Dessert and homemade ice cream also will be available.
It’s also an opportunity for residents to participate in a book swap and to view the town’s new exercise center in its community building.
A fireworks show begins at dusk.

Right next door, in Linn County near Mound City, Sheriff Barry Walker and helpers destroyed more than $100,000 worth of marijuana Monday. It was being grown in a wooded area in 10 separate garden plots, they said.
They didn’t catch the gardeners. But undercover agents who know about such things say the operation is typical. Workers camp out in unplowed fields where owners obviously spend little time and go to work. They plant, cultivate and harvest the plants under contract with higher ups who market the crop in big cities — such as Iola and Chanute.
The profit is high enough to let the bosses pay the peons $200 a day with maybe a bonus at the end of the year. That’s $25 an hour, more than a fair wage for gardening — even in a Kansas summer.
Marijuana has been grown in this not-so-secret way in Allen County — and everywhere else in the temperate zone — for decades. Can’t the law be enforced?
Could be, but won’t be. It would be possible to find all the marijuana patches and make peddling so hazardous a profession that those now selling weed would go to meth, or crack, or some designer drug. But we — society, that is — aren’t willing to spend what an all-out effort would cost to accomplish so little for so short a time.
Drugs will be part of our culture for as long as users are willing to pay an arm and a leg for their hits. These yard-sized plots of marijuana were worth $100,000 because users are willing to pay absolutely ridiculous prices for the dried leaves. And when that much money can be made so easily with so little risk, the stuff will be grown and sold.
The solution is to get a handle on the demand side of the equation. Take the customer out of the picture and the fields go back to soybeans or just plain hay. Easier said … as the saying goes.
Legalization is a compromise solution. Putting marijuana on the shelf beside tobacco — one appears to be about as harmful to health as the other — would reduce the price drastically, provide income to honest merchants, be a tax source for tax-hungry government and could result in much better treatment for addicts because use could be tracked and treatments experimented with much larger, better defined groups.
Mound City then might seek recognition as the marijuana capital of Kansas.
Legalization hasn’t proved to be a cure-all in Switzerland and other nations where it has been tried. They still keep trying, but making drugs available to addicts doesn’t eliminate addiction.
Extreme punishments have worked, however. In nations that execute dealers, the drug traffic disappears. Long prison sentences for users work, too. But these cures are worse than the disease.
Perhaps America’s fairly successful approach to tobacco offers acceptable instruction. The continuous anti-smoking public relations campaign — bolstered by the publicized example of lung cancer, heart disease and upper respiratory disease outcomes — has pulled the adult smoking rate down to 20 percent over the past half century or so. Not only are far fewer people smoking, but the habit itself has fallen into such disfavor with non-smokers, and not a few smokers, as well, that it is no longer something that cool people do in public. A successful culture change has been wrought.
Marijuana and more harmful drugs should be the next target.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.