The end of an era in newspaper delivery has arrived. As of Nov. 1, the print version of the East Oregonian will be delivered exclusively by mail.

The reasons for this change are both financial and practical: Carrier delivery is far more costly than USPS delivery, and we have had ever-increasing difficulty finding reliable carriers.

There are deeper reasons for this change as well, which are affecting the entire newspaper industry in the United States. The EO is not the first daily newspaper to transition to all-mail same-day delivery, and we certainly won’t be the last.

For over a century, the business plan for the EO was pretty simple. Revenue = subscription income + single copy sales + classified and display advertising revenue. The major expenses were newsprint, employee salaries and benefits, and press equipment maintenance. Since newspapers were the main — and often the only — source of news in many communities, there was a captive audience, willing to pay for the news and advertising that only their local paper could provide.

But then, a new delivery method for news arrived in the late 1990s: Online delivery.

In the last decade of the 20th century, newspapers had to invest in the computer equipment, software and training to make publishing online possible — while still producing a print newspaper on printing presses using technology that hasn’t changed much in the last hundred years.

With the internet came Craig’s List, eBay and Amazon — new ways of buying and selling that do not depend on newspaper advertising.

The internet also brought the news of the world to everyone with a computer, or in recent years, everyone with a smartphone.

In many ways, the internet has broadened the average citizen’s knowledge of the world, but may have disconnected them from their local communities. Across America, readers have dropped their paid newspaper subscriptions. Plenty of people perceive news of their local city council meeting or school board election to be far less interesting than entertainment news, gossip and scandals coming out of Hollywood or memes on Facebook.

As the publisher and an owner of the East Oregonian, I’d love to see our circulation and advertising revenue grow so that I can hire more journalists and cover Umatilla and Morrow counties in greater depth than we do now. However, in a region with slow population growth, growing circulation is a challenge. And in an environment where some of our biggest advertisers have gone out of business over the years (car dealers in Pendleton, K-mart, Albertson’s, Pendleton Grain Growers, JC Penney and Del’s to name a few), growing advertising revenue is also a challenge.

After our last fiscal year, I was faced with the very real need to cut expenses. After examining other options, such as dropping delivery days, I concluded that converting to mail delivery was the best option. It affords us significant savings and allows us to continue publishing five days a week.

Since we switched from afternoon delivery in 2012, our readers have become accustomed to morning delivery. (We made that change when The Oregonian stopped home delivery in Eastern Oregon.) For many who don’t get their mail until later in the day, we know this will take some getting used to.

If you need your news fix first thing in the morning, please subscribe to our email newsletter at www.eastoregonian.com/eo/newsletters so you can get the headlines and read the news online first thing in the morning. Also, our e-edition is posted online in the early morning hours each publication day.

If a print newspaper is the only way you want to read, you can still find the EO in single copy locations throughout both counties. Most locations in Hermiston and Pendleton will have papers by 6:30 a.m., but outlying areas will not get their papers until the mail is delivered to that location.

We know this will alter (again) the reading habits for some of our loyal print subscribers, and we hope you understand our aim is to continue bringing high-quality daily news coverage to Umatilla and Morrow counties. We see the times changing, and believe this is the best way to keep pace with them.