Fewer days or fewer pages?

It's easier to cut national/regional and local should always come first, but not everyone has the staff or events going on to have all local fronts all year round.
There is only so much local stuff most places can do in the summer with high schools and colleges dead.

 

we're a small daily with AP. we go bigtime on local copy, but AP sure comes in handy when we've got bigger papers and the weekend editions. everybody is holding their breath that AP could be one of the next cuts. will be interesting to see.

 

Both happened recently at my shop.

 

For small dailies, I say cut days. I caught a daily paper in my state that ran only one local story in an eight-page A section (albeit two of those pages were op/ed pages). But still, one local story and the rest AP copy is not something that is attractive to readers and advertisers.

 

I'd rather chop Monday's paper entirely than cut pages from each day.

 

Cutting days makes staffing easier.

 

Cutting pages is definitely the way to go.

You get rid of a day and you are screaming "panic" to your remaining readers, who, despite upper management's protestations otherwise, will be paying the advertising freight for at least another decade.

 

Allow this new guy to weigh in for fewer pages, not fewer days.

Once management decides to bag the Tuesday print edition (usually a slim day for news and advertising), it's a slippery slope until you reach the point where Detroit's dailies are at, putting out two or three print editions each week.

Remember, you can always tighten things up for the paper and put additional local stuff (notebooks, standings, stats, etc.) online.

 

When we eliminated our Monday paper, current subscriptions were extended by the number of Monday that would have been remaining in the term (If you would have received 10 more Monday papers, you got 10 issues tacked on at the end).

New subscribers and those who had to renew earliest got the shaft. The rates are based on "weeks," not issues, so the price remained the same with one less issue per week. Thankfully, our circulation is handled by the people at the mother ship and not here or else I doubt we'd have had much peace here for the first 6 months (People are still asking where their Monday paper is after it was eliminated 11 months ago).