EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- After 57 years, the Desert Wings is set to fly off into the sunset.

On Nov. 30, the 95th Air Base Wing Public Affairs office will publish its last edition of the Desert Wings before transitioning the paper to a private publisher.

The base newspaper will also gain a new name -- the Desert Eagle.

The move to transition the newspaper to a private publisher began in 2006, said Master Sgt. Eric Grill, 95th ABW Public Affairs superintendent.

"Through the Air Force Smart Operations 21 process, a newspaper working group determined that a typical news team spends 30 to 40 percent of its time designing the newspaper rather than writing news stories," Sergeant Grill said. "With the transition, our writers will be able to focus on reporting and will no longer be held to a strict production schedule."

Currently, all stories and submissions must be written and edited by Tuesday afternoon for inclusion in Friday's paper, he said.

"Once we transition, our writing staff will be able to write stories as they happen," Sergeant Grill said. "Transitioning the paper essentially eliminates the weekly production cycle and gives us the ability to release news stories in minutes rather than in days or weeks."

A revamped Web site was an important piece of the transition plan.

"When the new public Web site came online in January, we began posting our stories the same day the paper would come out," Sergeant Grill said. "After fine-tuning the process, we began publishing the stories directly to the Web on Tuesdays and pulled the articles into our newspaper design software."

After the transition, new articles and photos could be a daily occurrence on the Web site, he said.

The Desert Wings is produced by the 95th ABW Public Affairs office but is published through an Air Force contract by Aerotech News and Review, an Antelope Valley-based publisher. At the end of the contract, Aerotech will begin work on the Desert Eagle.

As one of the base commander's primary communication tools, the Desert Wings is read by more than 18,000 people per week including active-duty servicemembers, reservists, retirees, civilian employees and dependents.

"The Desert Wings has been a mainstay of Edwards Air Force Base for more than half a century," said Col. Bryan Gallagher, 95th ABW commander. "During that time, the public affairs staff has done an outstanding job producing award-winning articles that showcased Edwards to the world."

Most recently, the Desert Wings was honored with the Air Force Materiel Command award for best tabloid-sized newspaper for 2006, Sergeant Grill said. One Desert Wings staff writer was named the best new writer in the Department of Defense in 2005.

The Desert Wings was scheduled to end in late February. However, a decision was made to postpone the change.

"At the time, we had not finalized the agreement to transfer the newspaper to a private publisher," Colonel Gallagher said. "Understanding that there are plenty of people who still prefer a printed newspaper, we thought it was best to make sure we didn't rush the transition process."

Aside from a change in the front page graphic, readers may not notice many differences between the old and new publications.

"Our hope is that the change will be mostly transparent to anyone who picks up the paper every Friday morning," Colonel Gallagher said.

The first issue of the Desert Eagle hits base newsstands Dec. 7.