Change. Don't you hate it?

Why do things have to change? When we find something we like, it should just stay the same.

Unfortunately, the world is always changing, and your newspaper changes with it.

You'll notice one of those changes in the paper today, in the TV Week section. We have dropped the separate movie and sports listings. We felt the information in the listings duplicated information in the hourly grids in TV Week, and in the larger prime time grids we run Monday-Saturday.

The information in the grids remains the same as it has been for several years, but we are making a change to respond to a complaint voiced by many of our readers.

We are moving the prime time grids for each day to facing pages of TV Week. For each day, the broadcast networks will be on the left hand page and the cable programming will be on the right hand page.

That will make it easier for you to look at each evening's schedule without having to turn pages.

Reducing the number of pages in TV Week was a business decision. As the cost of printing and distributing the newspaper keeps going up, sometimes we have to reduce our costs.

We looked at everything we publish and decided that dropping the movie listings would hurt our readers the least. You can still find all the movies in the grids.

Three weeks ago we dropped the weekly listings of stocks in the Saturday business section. Again, this was a business decision. We think only a small percentage of our readers use these listings, and there are other readily available sources for stock quotes, such as The Chronicle's Web site, augustachronicle.com.

To get the latest quotes on stock from all the exchanges, and news about the stock market, go to chronicle.augusta.com/stocks/. You can search for a particular stock or just browse through the list of all of them.

Believe me, I don't like to take anything out of the paper. My job is to put things in the newspaper. But putting out a newspaper is a business, and we have to do the best we can with the resources available.

The No. 1 job of a newspaper like The Chronicle is to give you local news. We will continue to put our emphasis on the kind of local news you can't get anywhere else.

We will continue to give you the extras such as comics and puzzles and TV listings. At times there will be fewer of them. But every day you will get far more than 50 cents' worth of vital information, fun and entertainment when you buy The Chronicle.

Frankly, I don't know how anyone can get through the day without a newspaper.

As our circulation continues to grow, I know thousands of people each day agree with me.

Dennis Sodomka is the executive editor of The Augusta Chronicle. You can reach him at (706) 823-3487 or at dennis.sodomka@augustachronicle.com.