And so begins the “less than daily” publications experiment for the two Detroit newspapers, The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, which publish under a joint operating agreement.
In an effort to survive the economic crisis, the two Detroit newspapers The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News,have decided to end home delivery on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Instead, on those days, they are directing readers to their Web sites and offering a condensed print version at stores, newsstands and street boxes. Of course, the newspaper’s content is available online, and thru an e-paper edition.
The FREE printed edition of The Detroit Free Press is in compact format, and consists of 32 pages.
Detroit Press Publisher David Hunke urged business leaders in his community to be open to change. He was doing this on the day his newspaper launched what the newspaper referred to as “an industry-unique way of delivering news across multiple technologies and formats”
“Have guts to do what you need to do now, it is not going to get any easier
According to The New York Times, on Monday, traffic to the e-paper online was up five times from the normal traffic, with more than 50000 people trying to get the news that way.
In addition, the two newspapers distributed about half a million copies of a FREE, condensed version of the newspaper. So far, many of the regular readers were not very happy about the new situation.
“This morning, I felt like something was missing,” said Nancy Nester, 51, a program coordinator at a traumatic brain injury center who is from West Bloomfield and has subscribed to both papers for four years. “There was this feeling of emptiness.”
Others of her generation were also saying that they wanted a newspaper they could hold in their hands, and some said that they still want that newspaper delivered to their front door, as opposed to going to the store to get the free, condensed version.
It remains to be seen how the experiment plays out in Detroit.
The official statement from the Detroit Free Press about its new publication strategy: The editions are part of a new delivery system that includes three-day-per-week home delivery of the newspaper and a host of digital offerings. The Free Press will be published seven days a week, and delivered to subscribers Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Every day, it will be available at thousands of retail outlets and coin boxes.
For the full New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/business/media/31paper.html?ref=media
See our previous posting on the subject:
https://www.garciamedia.com/admin/index.php?S=ad55a740d157bd0a2da6f195ca8ec1f1be330928&C=edit&M=view_entry&weblog_id=6&entry_id=473
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To read TheRodrigoFino blog, in Spanish, go:
https://garciamedia.com/latinamerica/blog/
TheMarioBlog posting #229