This Sunday, July 4, is a national holiday celebrating our nation's independence. But it's also The Morning Journal's day of "independence" from the old-style ways of reporting and making newspapers. It's our Ben Franklin Project edition, and we think you'll like what you see.

As I've mentioned earlier, this project involving all Journal Register Company newspapers under the guidance of CEO John Paton is in the spirit of Ben Franklin, founding father, printer, experimenter and revolutionary.

Sunday's paper and website are being reported in collaboration with readers from start to finish and produced using software tools that are freely available to anyone on the Internet. The goal is to demonstrate that quality newspaper journalism that can be produced in communities more economically, more effectively and more in touch with the readers in print and online.

Using our printed pages, our website www.MorningJournal.com plus social media tools Facebook and Twitter we solicited story ideas from readers, then collaborated with them in gathering facts and quotes, pictures and videos to tell the stories that you will see on Sunday, in the newspaper and online.

Those major non-breaking news stories are finished and have been edited. They are now being fashioned together with photos to create pages that will go to press Saturday night, including late-breaking news.

And on Sunday morning, July 4, 2010, you'll be able to go on our special website or pick up the paper and read what is really a revolutionary newspaper on holiday that celebrates the revolutionary creation of the United States of America on July 4, 1776.