The Syracuse Post-Standard (NY) and Harrisburg’s The Patriot-News (PA) have announced they are dropping to a three-days-a-week printing schedule in January. Both papers are part of the Advance Publications Inc family. According to a couple of news reports editors cited the economic model for newspapers no longer works and the need to reinvent themselves as 24 hour news sources.
Syracuse NY, Harrisburg PA papers drop to three day print schedule
6 thoughts on “Syracuse NY, Harrisburg PA papers drop to three day print schedule”
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Yet another sign of the dying newspaper industry. I am really beginning to envy all of the current, established and successful syndicated cartoonists whose careers were built during a healthier era of newspapers. They are the last to really enjoy what being a successful newspaper cartoonist is all about.
Not reading a daily newspaper each day is like not drinking your morning coffee each day. Once it ceases to be an every-day ritual, it’s easier to skip it more and more often until it’s no longer a part of your life at all. I think three-day publishing schedule will doom a paper to death sooner than might otherwise happen.
The problem with letting stock market speculators and predatory beancounters manage a business is that they don’t understand or care about how that particular business functions. They also care more about the next quarter’s numbers than the long-term health of the enterprise.
The centralization of newspaper ownership under people who have no idea how newspapers work has been as great a threat to their survival as the change in media technology. We used to speak of people having “ink in their veins.” Those crusty old b*st*rds would have gotten through this storm somehow.
When I was a kid, I used to get up at 5:00 AM to deliver The Post-Standard on my bike. (A three-day publishing schedule would have made my job much easier!)
My other local paper, the Norwich NY Evening Sun has a great online edition of their newspaper. It looks EXACTLY like the print version, except you read it on a screen instead of newsprint. Exact same content, exact same layout…not a mish-mash of borders and frames and drop-down windows and pop-ups like many online papers. The online edition of The Evening Sun is especially well-suited for the iPad. Subscription is the same price as print. I’d like to see more newspapers follow this example.
Great comments by Mike, Steve, and Ryan. I should add that the Advance owners decreasing newspaper frequency to three days a week remain incredibly wealthy people who could easily afford to keep printing newspapers every day.
As a kid, I used to read the Miami Herald, Miami Daily News, Homestead News Leader and Hollywood Sun Tattler some days. We also had access to the Ft. Lauderdale News and the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. Not so much anymore. Sad.