It’s our birthday, and we’ve created a new website to celebrate

The Moscow-Pullman Daily News is celebrating its 113th birthday today. There have been changes galore at the newspaper throughout those 11-plus decades ... so why does it feel like half of them have come in the last year?

Let’s rattle off the list: The Daily News rolled out a new e-edition in November; closed its Moscow office in December; got a redesign of its print edition in April; went to two print days a week and mail delivery to subscribers in May; and has seen plenty of staff turnover and retirements throughout the past year.

It’s been a lot — and a lot of those changes are ones we didn’t want to make. But the business climate of this era made some hard choices necessary.

Today, I have another adjustment to tell you about, but I’m hopeful this will be a welcome change.

Come Monday morning, dnews.com (as well as the Lewiston Tribune’s lmtribune.com) will have a revamped and more modern look. This isn’t just a rejiggering of our website’s framework; we are switching to a new content management system developed by Rust Communications, a scrappy, family-owned, Missouri-based newspaper company that seems to be a kindred spirit with our Tribune Publishing Co.

The new website is cleaner, loads faster and is easier to read. And most intriguing of all: It will feature a virtual assistant that readers can ask questions of and, using our archives and its artificial intelligence, the virtual assistant will provide an answer.

Sounds exciting, right?

Well, one note of caution: Website changes like the one we have planned Monday are notoriously challenging. There will almost certainly be hiccups with our new site. Please have patience with this transition. It has the potential to be a much-improved experience over our current online offering, but we do have tweaks to make.

To get started, subscribers will have to authenticate their account on the new site. We will email a note to our readers Sunday with details on how to log on to the new site, and anyone still having trouble can call our circulation office at (208) 746-8742 after 8 a.m. Monday.

This transition may also affect readers who have taken advantage of a username and password they’ve “borrowed” from a family member, friend or place of business. If you are in that camp, we would appreciate keeping you on our site, but as a paying subscriber, which will fund our efforts to continue telling the story of life on the Palouse, like we’ve been doing for the past 113 years.

This newspaper traces its birth to Sept. 28, 1911, which is when the Star-Mirror became a daily publication. The paper changed its name to the Idahonian in 1939, and kept the moniker until 1991, when it because the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Our switch to twice-a-week publishing and mail delivery in May was a bitter pill to swallow, and a small portion of our readers quit their subscription because of it.

But the majority has stuck with us, and for that, we are extremely grateful. I hope you are enjoying those jam-packed print editions on Thursdays and Saturdays, and I hope you are looking at our website or app every day of the week.

We are still the Daily News: We post stories and photos every single day of the week. And when our new site goes live Monday, the online reading experience should only get better.

Baney is the interim managing editor of the Lewiston Tribune and Moscow-Pullman Daily News. He can be reached at mbaney@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2251.