Anchorage Daily News will reduce to two print editions a week, beginning July 15

By
Suzanne Downing
-
34

Over the winter, the publisher of the Anchorage Daily News began asking thought leaders in Anchorage about how the community would react to the newspaper reducing its hard copy editions to twice a week.

The decision was made by the owners, the Binkley Company, and announced to staff in April, but a computer issue involving ransomware attacks postponed the date of conversion from June 2 to July 15.

The announcement of the planned reduction was made public today. According to the newspaper, three jobs will be lost; they are in the distribution department. No other jobs will be touched.

The newspaper already had outsourced its printing in 2017 to Wick Communications, which owns and prints the Frontiersman newspaper in the Mat-Su Valley, and it’s not been revealed if jobs will be lost at that printing plant as a result. Ryan Binkley, CEO, said that the journalism of the Anchorage Daily News will remain strong: “The move won’t affect news coverage or the organization’s journalistic ambition,” the paper said.

“The decision to reduce print days reflects changing reader habits and rising costs. Readership on ADN.com and its mobile app far exceeds that of the print newspaper — accounting for more than 90% of readership overall. The number of digital-only subscribers surpassed the number of print subscribers several years ago,” the newspaper said today in a story.

The news of the reduction was reported at Must Read Alaska on April 11, before the ransomware attack delayed the date for conversion.

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34 COMMENTS

  1. No big loss since the journalism writing of the paper is totally slanted in one direction. Now just a few days less of it. I feel sorry for the real workers of the paper who have no control over the direction of management and their views. Probably good that the decision is a couple months before an election.

  2. Good glad to see the liberals’ trash on the brink of failure just like everything they touch.
    I can’t wait for other liberal stupidity ideas to crash.

  4. I have to wonder how it might have worked if the Times had prevailed in the buyout? Big money controls government one way or the other, but mostly by controlling feeble minds.

  5. I believe someone once said that “Everything woke turns to sh**”. We are witnessing this first hand with the ADN. It’s too bad, 20 years ago I enjoyed reading it because they were more balanced.

  6. Failure upon failure – that is the big story of the ADN. I am genuinely sorry about this development, because a local-daily-printed newspaper has for several hundred years been an American community’s journal of record and the source of vital news to its citizens.

    Much has changed since the mid-1960s, when for two-three years I delivered a daily newspaper to the porch of every home that fronted three blocks of a midwest city street. Then, the newspaper was more a cohesive force within the community, but today’s newspapers – and the ADN included – seem to represent a foreign interest when its national news articles are authored by the slanted and partisan writers of the NYTimes and Washington Post. And who can forget that the ADN’s editors endorsed Barack Obama for president. Fie! Begone, ADN, and may we soon forget that you were ever one of us.

  7. Wow! This will sure reduce the amount of litter in neighborhoods where paper deliveries come without subscriptions.
    I lined old ADN yellow boxes on my new grass I planted to keep the graders from running up on my lawn and digging up sod and every box had a paper put in in them.
    I had preferred they be used for dog waste bags….

  8. The photo tells a thousand words. The ADN peddled misinformation throughout the Covid scare-demic and in doing so ruined many lives. It’s the Anchorage Daily Nonsense and has only gotten worse under the new management.

  10. The Anchorage Daily News, regenerates the NYtimes and the Washington Post!!! I’m shocked! just shocked. That our local Ketchikan Daily News also uses these sources. I’ve told our paper’s owner long ago the only reason I subscribed was I had a wood stove and a pet parrot, both require the use of the Daily News. I can read the paper in five minutes max! Local news (little) the comics and the ads. That is it!!! Well, recently I had cause to advise that same owner that I had ceased burning wood and the parrot died.
    Cheers.

  12. I remember the good old days when we had both the Times and Daily News every day. By reading the two papers and using our brains we were able to get the real story behind the news.

  13. Anyone wanna buy The ADN? It’s going up for sale again. The Binkley’s will unload it for less than they paid for it. Bidding starts at $999,000.
    Anyone? Offers?

  14. Two times a week seems about right for the bottom of a rodent or bird cage. I suspect that most folks who had an ongoing paper subscription were still paying for it out of habit for lining the bottom of a cage. Now what will folks do to paper train a puppy because twice a week supply of ADN is not enough for the task.

  16. ADN needs to die, it doesn’t serve the Alaskan people only the liberals from down south.

  18. I once delivered a fellow McClatchy leftist newsrag. They treated us poorly.. So much for being for the “workers”

  19. I hope they still sell the paper without and print. It works for my fish rap and lining the bird cage

  20. What a JOKE of a newspaper!!! They have not had fair and accurate reporting in the last 3 decades. Its a political front for liberal extremists. The ADN is not fit to wrap dead fish in. Hurry up and kill the entire paper off. Online news from MRAK is the answer to this flaming dumpster fire of a newspaper. Alice took the paper to the brink of disaster and Binkley took it over the edge.

    Ryan Binkley, CEO, said that the journalism of the Anchorage Daily News will remain strong: “The move won’t affect news coverage or the organization’s journalistic ambition,” the paper said. He’s not wrong….when you suck at reporting you cannot really get much worse than the ADN.

    Hey Ryan, start printing the newspaper on toilet tissue and I will restart my subscription.

    I am not sure what they will report for next three years now that Bronson is gone. I can only assume they will shift to abusing the Governor and right wing senators and reps. Tell Jamie Allard to watch her six.

    God Bless us all.

  22. Now we only get lied to on two days out of the week? C’mon, man. ADN can do better than that.

  23. Smile always comes to my face when I drive past their abandoned HQ off Bragaw. Their dishonest and divisive reporting often made me angry until I stopped reading them in the 90’s, but now I realize I didn’t hate them nearly enough. They have done a lot of damage to this state.

  24. Binkley should have read the Alaska public and realized that they wanted a newspaper that was either centrist or right of center. Not a communist rag like the LA Times, Seattle PI, New York Times or The Washington Post. It’s not hard to find a bullpen of not-flamingly liberal newspeople and a similarly-composed editorial board. This one is entirely on Binkley. Let it burn. And let a lot of cash burn with it. Anchorage will be all the poorer for it, but at least we’ll not have the progressive drivel anymore.

  26. I buy this newspaper when I have to paint something, because it it still cheaper than that special masking paper you can buy at Home Depot.

  27. I would guess the Binkley mafia will milk this election season hard and pocket the cash. And then Bankrupt the paper early next year. And then blame the failure of ADN on Trump, MAGA and Must Read Alaska. Boo hoo. Will be glad to see ADN go away.

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