Media companies in Harrisburg and Syracuse, N.Y., which share a corporate parent with The Express-Times, announced changes earlier today. Vote in our NEWS POLL.
On a day in which its corporate owner continued a shift away from daily printed newspapers, The Express-Times’ publisher said there are no plans in the Lehigh Valley to reduce the paper’s publication schedule.Newspapers in Harrisburg and Syracuse, N.Y. — owned by Advance Publications Inc., which also owns The Express-Times — announced today they will switch to a three-days-a-week publication cycle in January.
“There are no plans to do that here,” said Martin Till, president, publisher and chief executive officer of Lehigh Valley Media Group, which owns The Express-Times and lehighvalleylive.com.
Till said Advance Publications properties operate independently of one another in different markets. Advance has reduced its print schedule in noncompetitive newspaper markets, unlike the Lehigh Valley where The Express-Times competes with The Morning Call of Allentown, WFMZ-TV 69 and several other media outlets.
The Express-Times publishes seven days a week and will continue to do so, Till said.
“We have become the largest media website in the Valley and we’re the largest daily newspaper in Northampton County,” he said. “We’re going to continue to grow our audience and we’re in good shape.”
The moves in Syracuse and Harrisburg follow similar changes at seven other Advance properties, including The Times-Picayune in New Orleans and newspapers in Alabama and Michigan. Those changes were accompanied by hundreds of layoffs.
In Harrisburg, where The Patriot-News is reducing its print schedule, publisher John Kirkpatrick said jobs will almost certainly be reduced, but those decisions are several weeks away. The number of editorial content producers, such as reporters and photographers, would likely remain about the same, he said.
“They understand the power of the digital world and the profound shift in the ways readers get their news and advertisers get their message out,” Kirkpatrick told The Associated Press, after meeting with the staff.
At The Post-Standard of Syracuse, editor and publisher Stephen Rogers told employees that newspapers’ economic model has become nonviable. The Post-Standard will publish on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.
“If we simply maintain the status quo, if we continue to do just what we have been doing — no matter how well we do it — The Post-Standard would face extinction in a matter of years,” Rogers said. “This is an irreversible trend. We either adjust, or we perish.”
The Patriot-News won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year for its coverage of Jerry Sandusky child sexual-abuse scandal at Penn State University. Kirkpatrick said there will be an expansion of around-the-clock news coverage online.
“We are not making this move lightly,” Kirkpatrick wrote in an email announcing the decision. “We understand how important the daily print paper is to a large number of people in our region. However, this is a major step to make sure we are leading, not trailing, in the world of innovation and solutions.”
The newspaper will continue to publish on Sundays, while the other two days have not been determined.
The holdings of Advance Publications Inc., a privately held communications company, include newspapers in 25 cities, including The Express-Times and its website, lehighvalleylive.com. Of those, seven have moved to three-days-a-week publication; The Patriot-News, of Harrisburg, and Syracuse, N.Y., Post-Standard announced plans today to follow suit. Here is a look at the others:
The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, whose content appears on nola.com, is moving this fall to print production Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
The Birmingham News, The Press-Register and The Huntsville Times in Alabama in May also announced three-days-a-week publication, with content featured on al.com.
The Flint Journal, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times in Michigan, whose website is mlive.com, began publishing Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays in June 2009. In addition, The Ann Arbor News closed in July 2009 and was replaced by annarbor.com.
