If you’re a regular Carolina Journal reader, you’ll probably notice a big change in the look and feel of our June print edition.

The first thing that may catch your eye: Every page is in full color, rather than the four or eight color pages in previous editions. It’s a more expensive process, but the payoff is worth it, we think. We’ll have the opportunity to present more compelling images and use them to complement our storytelling.

A fresh, clean design will highlight the visual and verbal aspects of our coverage, thanks to the vision and efforts of Designer Greg de Deugd, Managing Editor John Trump, and input from the rest of our editorial team.

As for the content, we’ll do more analytical reporting and analysis of North Carolina government and politics. CarolinaJournal.com should remain a staple of your daily media diet, with our reporters and editors offering incisive takes on North Carolina news, politics, and policy — and our Daily Journal writers continuing to offer the sharpest commentary you’ll find anywhere in the state.

But our print edition will take a longer view of these important events and trends. The paper will provide more of the “why” behind the stories we cover. Why these ideas and policies matter, why elected officials, local leaders, and North Carolina residents are taking action, and — most of all — why you should care.

We’ll also provide more connections to CJ’s past, with references to stories we’ve published over the years that remain relevant, along with updates to our reports for those of you who wonder what happened to an elected official or tax-funded program we’ve highlighted.

CJ began in 1991 as a 16-page slick magazine, published six times a year, mailed to a few hundred readers, filled with commentary, some original reporting, and a handful of cartoons and photographs. By 2001, CJ shifted to the tabloid newsprint format, with a greater focus on statewide news and investigations but with an appearance that often seemed dated, even for its time.

With our new design, we get a chance to show and tell more stories that matter. And we’ll continue tweaking the appearance over the next few issues, thanks in part to your feedback.

You’ll keep seeing familiar bylines and faces in these pages: Don Carrington, Dan Way, Kari Travis, John Trump, Mitch Kokai — and, of course, John Hood, our regular contributors, and me.

We’re also delighted to add a new person to the team: Lindsay Marchello, a 2016 graduate of Columbus State University in Georgia who helped run the Bayonet and Saber, a weekly newspaper serving the community in Fort Benning, Ga. Earlier this year, she did fine work for Reason magazine in Washington, D.C., in the internship program founded and funded by the late Winston-Salem native Burton C. Gray.

You’ve already seen Lindsay’s work online and in social media, and she’ll be a major contributor to the print edition, too.

As always, we couldn’t tell any of these stories without your generous support. Every month we circulate nearly 30,000 copies of CJ by mail, another 15,000 as inserts in community newspapers, and another 1,200 through newsstands or other outlets. Including readers of our print edition and our website, CJ reaches 135,000 people each month.

If you haven’t signed up for CJ by mail (free of charge), or CJOnline’s daily email update, please do so here.

Thank you for helping us tell the stories that can make North Carolina First in Freedom.

Rick Henderson is editor-in-chief of Carolina Journal.