December 13, 2008 Detroit Newspapers May Sharply Cut Home Delivery By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/business/media/13free.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News are planning to stop home delivery most days of the week and print a pared-down version of their papers for newsstands on those days, according to people briefed on the plans. They will be the first major dailies in the country to take such drastic steps. The papers will deliver to subscribers only on the most profitable days of the week — Sunday, and either Thursday or Friday or both, said these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the changes and the decisions were not final. On other days, they will still print slimmer single-copy editions. The changes will be accompanied by staff cuts, these people said. Newspapers across the country are besieged by falling revenue, but the papers in Detroit, home of the struggling auto industry, face particularly grim prospects in the next year. Calls to the Detroit Media Partnership, which runs the two papers, were returned by an outside public relations consultant, Leland K. Bassett. “There will be an announcement of a new business model made on Tuesday,” Mr. Bassett said. He declined to elaborate, except to say, “We do expect to print newspapers every single day.” Across the country, a handful of papers have dropped print entirely, becoming strictly online news outlets, including The Christian Science Monitor and The Kentucky Post. A few relatively small papers have stopped printing on the weakest advertising and news days of the week, like The East Valley Tribune, in the Phoenix suburbs, which will soon go from seven days to four. Industry analysts say they think some major papers will make similar moves, but are divided on whether it makes sense. Cutting back on printing and delivery saves money, but it also accelerates the migration of readers to the Internet, where papers have found vastly expanded audiences and paltry revenue. Over the last several days, rumors of major changes have run rampant at the two Detroit papers, including accounts that they would not print at all on some days. In a memo to employees, Dave Hunke, the chief executive of the partnership, reassured them that both papers would be kept alive and that they would be presented with a plan next week, adding that “we have been exploring various scenarios to reposition” the papers. The Gannett Company, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, owns The Free Press and has primary control of the Detroit partnership; MediaNews Group, another major chain, owns The News. The people familiar with the partnership’s plans say it is losing money; few American cities can support more than one profitable daily paper anymore. The Free Press has weekday circulation of 298,000, the 20th-largest in the country, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, and its Sunday edition ranks sixth, at 605,000. The News, which does not print on Sundays, has weekday circulation of 178,000. As at other newspapers around the country, circulation at both has dropped steeply — a decline of about one-quarter since 2000 for The Free Press, and one-third for The News, which then was an evening paper. Both Detroit papers have been selling readers what they call an electronic edition — a digital version of the paper, just as it appears in print, downloaded to a computer. But as with other papers, their content is also available free on their Web sites. -- ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
