Spring is a time for growth and renewal in our fields, gardens and lawns.

We're getting with the spirit of the season by rolling out some significant changes in the paper.

Coming May 1, you'll notice a new look for TNT. Our weekly entertainment section will still focus like a laser beam on local arts and entertainment, but it will get a design makeover and gain some new features: The editor's entertainment picks for the week, a more attractive events calendar and a page dedicated to movies.

Later in the month - date uncertain - our Business section will sprout a new agribusiness spin-off, the next phase in our effort to make Business more useful to people who actually do business in south-central Idaho.

We're still in the planning stages, but we'll likely take one day a week to emphasize issues of interest to dairymen, farmers, ranchers and the people who do business with them. We anticipate a fuller local commodities roundup, more coverage of water availability and other news and information of interest to the kind of people who still have an FFA jacket hanging in their closet.

We're still in the planning stages, and we're open to suggestions on what would be most useful to farmers. The best way to put in your two cents' worth is to drop Business Editor Josh Palmer an email at joshua.palmer@lee.net. Resist the urge to call him, though. He's already swamped doing exactly what you and I want him to do.

Meanwhile, Times-News readers should mark May 18 on their calendars as the date they'll receive a new, bigger, better and more comprehensive summer Adventure Guide, which will include virtually everything anyone would want to know about tourism and recreation within a half-day's drive of this very spot - with the exception of the answer to the time-tested question "are we there yet?"

Readers of the South Idaho Press will get the guide in their papers on Saturday, May 24. People who get both are encouraged to share with someone who looks like they could use a nice vacation.

The guide will be thicker this year, but it'll also be a tad smaller - better to fit in your lunch, glove or tackle box.

We made headlines last week, but not in the usual fashion. In keeping with the spring theme, we did a little pruning.

On Wednesday Lee Enterprises, the exceptionally well-managed, highly profitable corporation run by the finest and most attractive people ever (OK, they sign my paycheck), announced it will cease publication of the Lincoln County Journal and the Minidoka County News at the end of this month. We also announced that the sale of the Wood River Journal in Hailey is final.

Lee owns this newspaper, the South Idaho Press in Burley, the North Side News in Jerome and the Gooding County Leader. Based in Davenport, Iowa, Lee owns more than 50 daily newspapers, untold numbers of weeklies and other publications around the country.

Don't read anything personal into the closure or sale of the three weeklies. It was a business decision driven by factors any business person can understand - a desire to stop losing money chief among them.

In a perfect world, every small town would have a local newspaper with an office on Main Street. Trouble is, a newspaper has to turn a profit to survive. The papers in Shoshone and Minidoka had withered away over the years - so much so that you could call each subscriber and read them the news one-by-one and still have time for a long lunch. They were no longer viable, though they will be missed by a small number of loyal readers.

The Wood River Journal was a separate issue. As a free publication, it had no subscribers. Instead, advertising was supposed to pay all of its bills. That didn't work out.

Does that mean we'll abandon Blaine, Shoshone and Minidoka counties?

Not on your life. We'll still cover those areas in the pages of the Times-News and South Idaho Press.

We'll also share content with the new owner of the Wood River Journal.

When the dust settles, we think the remaining combination of daily and weekly newspapers will give you as much or more local news while leaving our company that much stronger.

Editor James G. Wright may be reached at 208-735-3255 or james.wright@lee.net.