I count myself among the many readers who will never completely give up favorite print publications. There’s just something about the solidity of permanent ink and the beauty of design on paper pages. I find that I enjoy the reading experience I get from print in a way that an electronic screen cannot replicate.

That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate electronic reading. On the contrary. I rely on online outlets — mostly websites but also e-mail newsletters and such — to keep up with the very latest news and avail myself of other informational features unavailable in print.

Which is why I’m excited about the changes coming to the Register, as announced in this forum last month: We’re getting ready, as of the first issue of the new year, to beef up our website and change the frequency of our print edition from weekly to every other week.

For us, the choice between print and electronic was never an “either/or” proposition. Right from the start it has been “both/and” (one of the characteristics of a Catholic mindset.)

We’re going to 26 print issues per year in order to improve our quality — look for two weeks’ worth of in-depth news and views that Catholics in the know can’t afford to miss — while reducing our costs. We need to do this to, like every other player in the journalism industry, survive and thrive as production expenses skyrocket — and as readers come to depend more and more on electronic delivery. (Not to mention the latter’s dynamic “extras” like speed, interactivity and cross-linked content.)

And so the National Catholic Register and NCRegister.com are about to turn a page in their history — literally. No reader will be left behind.