More than 40 years of history will be removed from The Tribune this week, paving the way for an exciting new era for the printed page here in Ironton and Lawrence County.

Today marks the beginning of the largest capital improvement project The Tribune has undergone since moving from Railroad Street and building its current facility at 2903 S. Fifth St. in the early 1970s.

We will begin removing the 40-plus-year-old newspaper printing press to replace it with a much newer and better-designed model that is truly designed to meet the needs of a 21st Century newspaper that still believes the printed editions are vital to what we do.

For you, as customers, we hope you don’t see a big impact — or any impact if we are lucky — over the next two to three weeks.

The newspaper should look the same. It should be delivered at the same time. The focus will continue to be on local news.

We’ve taken great steps to ensure all this happens as seamlessly as possible.

But, once completed, we expect customers will see some changes.

We anticipate significantly better color reproduction, more color pages, additional overall page capacity if needed and just a cleaner appearance to the newspaper.

This is a massive undertaking that has been in the works for nearly a year, overcoming a few starts and stops along the way.

I’m sure we will face a few more speed bumps before it is all done.

Press foreman Bo Elliott and his team deserve a lot of credit for their work on the front end to help ensure this goes smoothly.

We do appreciate our readers’ patience as we take this next step for the newspaper.

Change is often not easy. But we feel this is a change that will pay dividends for years to come and keep The Tribune in all its forms, Lawrence County’s best source for local news.

Michael Caldwell is publisher of The Tribune. To reach him, call (740) 532-1445 ext. 24 or by e-mail at mike.caldwell@irontontribune.com.