Editor's Desk

Tuesday paper to see some changes

Posted by: John Beck

Tuesday, March 10, 2009 10:36 AM

As I wrote in a column for our Sunday, March 8, newspaper, we're reducing the size of our Tuesday paper from 24 to 20 pages in two sections rather than four starting March 10. We made the same reduction in our Monday paper several weeks ago.

The change in the Tuesday paper means we’ll be moving some features from the Tuesday paper to other days of the week or from their customary places to other spots in the paper.

The reason for the changes is simple: the faltering economy. The Monday and Tuesday papers traditionally are the weakest in terms of advertising support, a situation made worse by the current recession. The cost of ink and paper is our second-largest expense behind salaries, and trimming the number of pages in the Monday and Tuesday papers allows us to save some money — actually a significant amount over time.

The recession is having an effect on our business as it has on many other businesses locally and nationally. Advertising — classified, retail ads and national inserts — provides the major part of the revenue we need to support all the aspects of our operation, including the local journalism and all the features that make our newspaper so interesting to so many people each day.

Businesses that in normal times would be regular advertisers in our paper have cut back or stopped advertising altogether. You can see the effect readily in our classified advertising sections, which have shrunk by 30 to 40 percent over the last couple of years.

The decrease in classified advertising along with fewer ads in other sections of the paper explains our need to tighten up our Monday and Tuesday papers. We may run larger papers on those days when called for, such as the March 16 edition, which will contain our NCAA basketball preview edition.

With those papers now at 20 pages, we’ll be eliminating our Living section and moving a number of regular features to new days. Here’s a rundown:

— Weddings and engagements will move from Tuesday to the Wednesday Living section.

— Anniversaries and birthdays will move from Monday to the Wednesday Living section if space is available. If not, we’ll run them later in the week.

— Other items such as new names in the news, neighbors and military news in brief will run as space is available in the Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday Living sections.

— On the Town moves from Wednesday to the Friday Living section.

— Sandra Ahten’s biweekly Reasonable Diet column moves from Tuesday to the Wednesday Living section.

In order to use space in the paper more efficiently, we’re also condensing our amusements pages (television, puzzles and comics) from three to two in the Monday through Saturday papers. To do this, we’ll be decreasing the size of the daily television grid by listing only prime time television shows from 7 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., and moving the grid to the page with the crossword puzzle and other amusements. We’re also dropping TV critic Kevin McDonough’s Tune in Tonight column in favor of a daily best bets column. The daily horoscope will move to the classified section as part of this change.

We’ve tried to approach these changes in a way that will preserve the quality of the newspaper for our readers as well as our ability to provide the local journalism that our readers expect and deserve from us. As always, your comments are welcome.

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