The Gospel in Words: A familiar name returns

Dear readers:

With today's editions, your daily newspaper again has a redesigned front-page masthead that says Deseret News. We've dropped the Morning.

When the News switched from being an evening paper to morning delivery for all editions five years ago, making Morning our middle name was an important indicator of the rise-and-shine freshness we wanted to convey and embody. We succeeded: Contrary to trends around the nation, our circulation increased.

But much can happen in five years, and in this case it was the continued, rapid rise of news on the Web, and an ever-increasing appetite among browsers for immediacy and updates.

The daily paper and our Web site, deseretnews.com (which never included the "morning" reference in its site address), comprise a 24-hours-a-day/seven-days-a-week news center — if news breaks, or if we have a story we think Deseret News readers in Utah or anywhere in the world will be eager to see, we want it on the Web as soon as is practicable or logical, as well as in the printed newspaper, where it is perused in an entirely different way.

Since our founding in 1850, this newspaper has been known as the Deseret Semi-Weekly News, the Deseret Evening News and the Deseret News & Salt Lake Telegram. Yet to many over the past few years, in casual conversation and among newscasters referring to our stories, we've always been simply the Deseret News — or the News.

And, indeed, that's who and what we are — morning, noon and night.

— Joseph A. Cannon, editor