FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, Wash. -- This week's edition of the Fairchild Connection will take readers into Phase II of a three-part transformation from a printed newspaper to an exclusive Web-based delivery system.

The 92nd Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs staff will continue to provide up-to-date and pertinent information to its readers. That will not change. The adjustment, however, will be in the medium used for news delivery.

"The Public Affairs staff here is already shifting in the way they present the Air Force story and distribute the commander's message to Team Fairchild and the community," said Capt. Jason McCree, 92nd ARW Public Affairs officer. "This tool will allow them take time saved in design and layout of the newspaper and use it to further increase the quality and quantity of locally produced articles."

This transition is in response to a recommendation from the Secretary of the Air Force's public affairs division to redirect wing Public Affairs offices to move away from a printed product and toward delivering the news via the Internet. The recommendation was made to help wing public affairs offices continue to perform the mission despite rising deployment taskings and reduced manning.

The savings in manpower is realized because of the reduced amount of time required to update the Web page versus having to design and layout the newspaper every week.

This public affairs office worked with the wing's Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st century facilitator, William Long, to develop a plan to smoothly transform the news delivery system without leaving the customer behind.

This transition will not only allow the PA office to continue to operate and deliver a high-quality product to the customer with reduced manning, but it will also enable the wing to tell the Air Force story to a wider audience.

"Moving the news delivery method from a printed product to a Web-based system greatly increases the potential audience," said Captain McCree. "We can now get the wing's message to our deployed Airmen, the parents and families of servicemembers stationed here and the civilian community."

Initial concerns about resistance to change this decades-old system are being offset by the shift in mindset of the military as a whole.

"More and more systems and customer service functions are moving to a Web-based format," said Captain McCree. "Applications such as myPay, the Virtual Military Personnel Flight, the Virtual Education Center and others will continue to drive this change in the way the Air Force does business."

Not only will the message reach more people, but many of the restrictions of a traditional printed product will be reduced or eliminated.

In the current format, the newspaper has a finite amount of space for editorial content from week to week. Once the move is made to the Web, space limitations no longer apply. This means that the articles can be more in-depth, contain more information and there is no limit to the number of graphics and photos that can be used to tell the story.

Until the beginning of this year, the public Web site, which has been online since October 2005, highlighted selected articles from the Connection.

In Phase I of the transformation, which ran from Jan. 12 to Feb. 9, Fairchild's public Web site not only continued to be updated with selected stories from the Connection, but also started to receive exclusive content that did not appear in the printed paper. In this phase, the Web site grew to be more robust and started to carry some of the regular columns that appear in the Connection. Regular columns such as the Diamond Corner, Fairchild MVP and This Week in History have been added since the start of the year.

As the paper continues its progression through the second phase of the conversion, the public Web site will be updated with additional content that appears in the Connection. The site will continue to have exclusive content in this phase as well.

The March 30 issue of the Fairchild Connection will be the last printed newspaper.

In phase III, which will start April 1, the Public Affairs office will continue to deliver timely news through the Web site and the Commander's Access Channel.

Once the transition is complete, Connection readers will be able to get their news about Fairchild, Air Mobility Command, the Air Force and the military on time, online. The Public Affairs office and the newspaper publisher are currently working on a possible continuation of classifieds distribution on the base.