#Detroit free press vacation stop free
"I grew up fighting for the Free Press with my three siblings, and my kids fight over it too, so it's a great tradition," Knight says as she sits at the kitchen table with her 4-year-old daughter, the newspaper sprawled out in front of them. She says home delivery is a big part of her family's routine. Kate Knight, a stay-at-home mom, is part of this key demographic for newspapers. "And so when the revenue goes away, they need to take out costs quicker than a company that has a little more cushion over its interest payments."įinancial climate aside, the decision by Detroit's two daily newspapers to cut back home delivery in favor of online content comes with a great risk: losing the habitual reader. "Those companies that have put a lot of debt on the balance sheet certainly have a lot less flexibility and a lot less room to endure this type of pressure," Simonton says. Mike Simonton, who follows the industry for Fitch Ratings, says the debt puts added pressure on daily papers. Their owners have accumulated more and more debt in recent years. The recent bankruptcy filing by the Chicago Tribune's parent company highlights another financial hurdle facing some newspapers. For every customer they have on the Internet, they make about 10 to 15 cents." "For every customer that they have print newspaper, they're making about a dollar. "Newspapers are making money off the Internet they're just not making it in a way that they make it in the kind of margins that they make from a print newspaper," says Mark Fitzgerald, an editor at large with Editor & Publisher magazine.
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But now the industry faces a crowded marketplace that includes a big gorilla: the Internet.Įxperts say the problem is that newspapers haven't figured out how to make a lot of money off online content. It used to be that newspapers competed largely with each other for classifieds and advertising revenue. "We think it's time to quit sticking our heads a bit in the sand, taking incremental steps, and, frankly, relentless across-the-board expense cuts in our business, in the name of hoping that it comes back to the way it used to be in years gone by," Hunke says.
Under the new plan, the Detroit papers will be delivered only three days a week - Thursday, Friday and Sunday - with a scaled-down print version available at newsstands the rest of the week.ĭetroit Free Press publisher David Hunke says the papers have no other choice. So, it's a grand experiment that is about to play out in Detroit. The industry as a whole is facing declines in circulation and ad revenue. Beginning in March, The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press will be delivered only three days a week - Thursday, Friday and Sunday - with a scaled-down print version available at newstands the rest of the week.Įxecutives at Detroit's two daily newspapers, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, announced Tuesday that they plan to drastically cut back their printing operations and beef up their Web presence.Īnd these papers may not be the last to make this kind of change.
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