Bob Dylan was right.

The times are a changin’.

At a recent event at the Weatherly Clubhouse in Alabaster, Shelby County Newspapers Inc. announced the launch of new product — the Alabaster Reporter.

This new, hyper-local product will be a similar to the Shelby County Reporter, but it will focus solely on the city of Alabaster.

With the county rapidly approaching 200,000 people, it is growing more and more difficult for us to tell all the stories we would like to tell within the pages of a weekly newspaper.

Even though our Web site, ShelbyCountyReporter.com, allows us to have a daily presence on the Internet, it is still often a challenge for us to cover all the things we would like to in each of our cities.

Thus, the Alabaster Reporter was born.

This new product will have a similar look and feel to our Shelby County product, yet we have made enough changes to make it uniquely Alabaster.

Through the pages of the Alabaster Reporter, we hope to tell the stories of what’s going on in Alabaster’s backyard.

Although Alabaster content will remain within the pages of the Shelby County Reporter, we understand that some citizens aren’t as interest in what’s going on in other cities in the county, and vice versa, so we hope this new product will cater to what you are looking for in your hometown newspaper.

And hopefully, down the road, this hyper-localized approach to our news coverage will expand to other cities within Shelby County.

Our dream would be for every city in Shelby County to have a newspaper it can call its own.

However, a hometown newspaper cannot be what it should be without reader participation.

We highly encourage you to keep us informed on what’s going on in Alabaster, and every city, by sending us an e-mail, giving us a call or sending us a picture and a story.

In a community newspaper, the citizens are usually the best reporters, and you are our eyes and ears in town.

I certainly look forward to this new endeavor.

I also look forward to meeting each and every one of you.

If you have any questions, concerns, comments or news tips for the Alabaster Reporter, you can reach me by phone at 669-3131 ext. 17, 616-9037 or by e-mail at Austin.Phillips@AlabasterReporter.com.