The Kenai Peninsula-Clarion is reducing its print editions to two days a week, starting May 3.
The Clarion is owned by Sound Publishing, the same news company that owns the Juneau Empire, which is also moving to a twice-a-week print edition. The newspapers will be focusing more on their online news offerings, as the printed word becomes more expensive to produce and distribute, and as more readers adapt to a 24-hour digital news cycle.
The economics of printing just two days a week are uncertain at best. The fewer the people who subscribe to newsprint editions and the fewer the copies that are printed, the more expensive it becomes maintain staff to print the small number of copies and distribute those papers, as subscribers become spread out and paper deliverers can not make enough money to make it worth doing a route. Eventually, newspapers will shut their presses down altogether. In Juneau and in Kenai, the newspapers will be printed in the Seattle area, and flown up to Alaska, adding weather and flight delays to the mix that may make it increasingly an impractical option.
Some newspapers have not chosen to experiment with this bridge to the future, but to make the leap altogether. For example, on Feb. 26, The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and Mobile’s Press-Register stopped printing altogether, and moved online.
IMHO, producing a print edition of the JE six days a week would make a lot more financial sense if what they were printing was of higher quality…..
Darn! I needed those newspapers. Can’t use online news to start fire in wood-stove.
Now how are we supposed to light our woodstoves. Oh right. They are probably going to ban those anyway.
The Clarion has been a Leftist rag for my entire 45 years in Kenai, but makes the efforts of decades ago look tame by comparison. If they were truthful and balanced, they might have held onto their readerships. The overall trend dynamic is better for conservative thought this way — maybe.
My small Southern Wisconsin hometown newspaper went to two print editions weekly and website posts to survive a few years ago. It is a great little paper that focuses on local sports and news. These newspapers are the heart of America and need to be supported with subscriptions. My sister in another State reveives by mail, I have the electronic subscriprion only
Now what am I going to use to line my bird cage?
Financially troubled small-town newspapers all follow the same pattern. Reduce the number of print editions, then move 100% online, followed by loss of advertisers, then failure. First to call it.
Could only hope so. The Clarion is a leftist rag. Very much a mini-me of ADN.
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