As posted by: Wall Street JournalDetroit Media Partnership L.P., which operates the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, is expected to announce next week that it will cease home delivery of the papers' print editions on most days of the week, according to people familiar with the company's thinking.
Detroit Media has not made a final decision, these people said. But the leading scenario set to be unveiled Tuesday calls for the Free Press, the 20th largest U.S. newspaper by weekday circulation, and the News to end home delivery on all but the most lucrative days -- Thursday, Friday and Sunday. On the other days, the company would sell single copies of abbreviated print editions at newsstands and direct readers to the papers' expanded digital editions.
The Free Press, owned by Gannett Co., and the News, owned by MediaNews Group, are operated by Detroit Media under a so-called joint operating agreement.
Weekday circulation for Detroit's two major newspapers has plunged.
The Free Press and the News would be the first dailies in a major metropolitan market to curtail home delivery and drastically scale back their print editions. Other newspapers are contemplating similar moves in response to the erosion of advertising and the rising costs of printing and delivery. In October the Christian Science Monitor said it will stop printing a daily newspaper in April and move instead to an online version with a weekly print product.
Newspaper groups have taken drastic steps lately to align costs with shrinking revenue, including massive staff cuts and efforts to consolidate functions through partnerships like the JOA in Detroit. As many of those measures have proved insufficient, publishers have taken a harder look at shifting away from print or abandoning it altogether to save on printing and distribution.
Even by industry standards, the Detroit papers have been hit particularly hard, a result of the troubled auto industry's impact on Michigan SEO. Dave Hunke, Detroit Media's chief executive, said in October, "It's time for us to look at some radical departures from our business model."
Weekday circulation has declined 15% at the Free Press and 22% at the News over the past five years, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. As of September, the Free Press had a weekday circulation of 298,243, including 200,110 home and mail subscribers. The comparable numbers at the News were 178,280 and 97,483.
To address the mounting problems, Detroit Media has been working with IDEO Inc., a design firm based in Palo Alto, Calif., for the past six months to help reinvent the papers. The results of their work are scheduled to be unveiled to employees on Tuesday.
The changes are likely to result in significant job cuts. Gannett, which owns 85 daily newspapers, recently said it was eliminating 2,000 positions as part of a 10% staff reduction. Two of its papers, USA Today and the Free Press, were not part of those reductions.
"The Detroit Media Partnership is looking at everything right now just like everyone else in the country," said Leland K. Bassett, a spokesman.
Because the Detroit papers will continue to publish daily electronic versions, the cuts are expected to come mostly, if not entirely, from outside the newsroom, according to people close to the situation.
Curtailing home delivery would bring the Detroit papers much needed savings, but would also carry considerable risk. At a time when newspapers are fighting to retain readers, steering those readers online instead of delivering their paper to the door could cause them to lose the habit of reading a paper daily.
Rumors about Detroit Media's plans have surfaced in recent days on the "Gannett Blog" run by former USA Today reporter Jim Hopkins.
