The Alabama Media Group has announced that it will no longer publish newspaper hard copies.
front pages via Newseum
After February 26, 2023 the three largest newspapers in Alabama will go digital only.
Announcement from the Alabama Media Group:
Alabama Media Group will shift to all-digital delivery, ending publication in 2023 of its four newspapers in Alabama and Mississippi.
The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times and Mobile Press-Register and Mississippi Press will be published through Sunday, February 26, 2023. Subscribers will continue to receive The Lede, a 7-day-a-week e-edition that reports on each city.
“We remain deeply committed to serving our local communities and are producing high-quality journalism and reaching more people than ever before,” said Tom Bates, president of Alabama Media Group.
The company will keep its offices in each of the metro areas. This decision will result in the closure of a production facility in Mobile, Alabama, and will impact some local employees in production, circulation and advertising.
An accompanying story tells readers how this is all for the greater good.
According to Wikipedia the papers have been on a thrice-weekly schedule since 2012.
JD Crowe is the staff editorial cartoonist for the Alabama Media Group
and this shouldn’t affect his status with the publisher in any way.
However it will see less income for the cartoonists whose comic strips appear in the newspapers – digital reproduction typically pays far less than hard copy printing of the features.
AMG’s The Lede shows comic strips but it is unknown if those also appear in the print newspapers (there are a number of comics that are continuity strips that would not work by reading three times a week).
Following ownership up the corporate ladder shows the Alabama Media Group is part of Advance Local (Newhouse). If this tactic is successful will we see other Advance newspapers (The Staten Island Advance, The Syracuse Post-Standard, The Grand Rapids Press, The Oregonian, The Times of Trenton, and others) go the all-digital route?
The Wall Street Journal report.
One of the nation’s biggest publishers has decided to stop printing Alabama’s three largest newspapers and make them digital-only.
Advance Publications, which owns 24 newspapers as well as the Condé Nast magazine-publishing empire [The New Yorker] … will end the print operations of the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, and Mobile’s Press-Register in February.
Mario 500
Sad day. I grew up in Huntsville and the Times published my work as a teenager.