Another Midwestern newspaper had named an "editor for change."

A friend on the national news desk sighed and said, "Wouldn't it be nice to have an editor-for-staying-the-same?"

Propelled by economic forces, the newspaper industry and the rest of the nation has not stopped changing since that time, and today the Wisconsin State Journal embarks on more.

Beginning Dec. 31, the State Journal will reduce the stock listings in our paper. We have learned through readership studies that most investors now get their stock information from the Internet. We will refocus our resources, particularly savings from newsprint, on other efforts including the Capital Region Business Journal, our business section and retention of our talented journalists.

We know that many of our devoted State Journal readers may not be ready to go cold turkey to the Web, so we have retained stock information in the paper.

• We will publish a comprehensive list of stocks and mutual funds over three pages in our Saturday business section. We had printed those listings Sunday. The Saturday publication is more timely because the markets close Friday afternoon.
• We will print daily on our business pages a market summary with investment highlights.
• We have installed on our newly designed Wisconsin State Journal Web page a tool that easily helps you look up your stocks. Go to www.madison.com/wsj and look for the Stock Quote feature under the Business heading.
• We also have located a phone service for those of you who do not use the Web: 1-800-555-8355. Call this toll free line and Tellme Networks Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., will give you stock quotes as a public service. It is a voice-activated system so you don't have to punch any numbers.

We also will eliminate the New York Times News Service Jan. 1.

The New York Times News Service often sends its stories too late to make all editions of the paper, yet it charges tens of thousands of dollars a year. We have stayed with the service because it provides popular editorial page columnists, including my favorites, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman. The news service will not let us buy only these columns, and unfortunately, we can no longer accept such high costs when so few articles can be published in a timely way.

Scott Milfred, our editorial page editor, has found several new columnists who we will "test drive" in the coming weeks. Let me assure you that we are not eliminating any columnists because of their political points of view.

In the meantime, we will continue to be editors-of-change and we will continue to support several new features that make the State Journal more useful for you:

• We redesigned the State Journal Web site at www.madison.com/wsj.
• We added the top things you need to know before you leave the house in the morning with "Five on the Fly" on our Page One.
• We guarantee in-depth national/international news by devoting the bulk of a page to it everyday.
• Our State Journal columnists, particularly Susan Lampert Smith, Bill Wineke, Tom Oates and Andy Baggot, continue to get sharper each day. Love them or hate them, they are creating conversation in our community.

We do not easily remove content from the paper. We only do so in our effort to spare you price increases while we remain the area's main source for local news and your watchdog in civic matters. We know many of you have done more with less in the past few years of workforce reductions, gas price increases and slow economic growth. If you have any tips or questions, please call us at 252-6363. I will be out of the office for a few days, but feel free to e- mail me at efoley@madison.com. I'll respond after Jan. 3.

Finally, and most importantly, please have a hopeful, happy and healthy holiday season and a terrific new year.