FARMER CITY — The LeRoy Press will expand into the Farmer City area with its Aug. 5 edition and become the LeRoy Farmer City Press.

The weekly newspaper, published by News-Gazette Community Newspapers, will also change its publication date from Wednesday to Friday.

The newspaper, launched last November, has a paid circulation of 1,200 and serves residents of LeRoy, Downs and other parts of the LeRoy and Tri-Valley school districts.

Come August, it will also serve residents of Farmer City and the Blue Ridge school district.

Farmer City has been without a weekly paper since The Pantagraph in Bloomington stopped printing the Farmer City Journal last October.

The publication date for the Press is being changed to Friday to better serve advertisers, said Tim Evans, general manager of News-Gazette Community Newspapers. It will be easier for them to promote weekend sales and events.

Changing the day of publication will also make it easier to cover school board and village board meetings that often fall on Monday, he added.

The Press will be delivered to subscribers by the U.S. Postal Service and will be available on news racks Thursday afternoons, Evans said.

In Farmer City, the newspaper plans to have newsstands at Casey's General Store, Niemann Market and other locations.

Evans said once a month or so, the newspaper plans to be distributed to a wider area than its paid-subscription base, sometimes going to as many as 5,000 homes along the U.S. 150 corridor.

Subscriptions to the Press are $35 a year, Evans said. For every subscription sold in Farmer City and the Blue Ridge school district through the end of September, $10 will be given to Blue Ridge schools for use in literacy programs.

A similar subscription campaign was used when the paper was launched in LeRoy and Downs, and more than $1,200 from that campaign was given to the schools, he added.

The newspaper will be assembled in Mahomet at the office of The Mahomet Citizen, another publication of News-Gazette Community Newspapers.

Micky Deming, editor of the Press, lives in LeRoy and works from his home and other places around the area, Evans added.

The Press also has news, features and sports correspondents who serve as correspondents for The News-Gazette, Evans said. That gives readers the opportunity to get local news sooner than they would otherwise.