Perhaps you've considered that question, especially if you're a longtime reader of the Tracy Press. Looking at the history of our paper, it's gone from being a weekly to three days a week, from three to five days, then six and seven days a week, back to six and finally to five days a week, which is our publishing schedule in 2006.
The main reason for dropping the Monday paper last year, of course, was financial. Newspaper operations are expensive ones, and for us, a family paper, Monday advertising revenues weren't coming close to covering the costs of delivering on those days. Plus, we noticed that a considerable number of home subscribers weren't picking up their newspapers on Monday mornings.
Our publishing schedule is a constant topic of conversation for us. That's why I found a story in this week's
Editor and Publisher (subscriber-only — sorry!) magazine to be so interesting. It gives credit to Hazel Reinhardt of Media Management Center for suggesting that small-market newspapers would be better off publishing five or six days a week instead of seven. That was considered heresay in the 1990s, the article says. But seven-day publishing is losing favor, as more and more papers are looking at dropping Monday and even Tuesday papers.
Meanwhile, I wouldn't have time to blog on a Sunday, as I'm doing today, if I had a Monday paper to put out. Instead, I'll take the day off (what a concept!) and update the Monday Web site later this evening.
