Harrisburg Patriot-News to go to three days per week print schedule; Are Advance Publications' NJ papers next?

Tom Paine

Advance Publications is expanding its transition to a three days per week print schedule for its newspaper properties. The new format, which Advance first initiated at a Michigan paper and then expanded to Alabama and New Orleans, is now being rolled out to Harrisburg and Syracuse.

The Harrisburg Patriot-News and Advance's online arm in Pennsylvania, PennLive.com, will form one organization, PA Media Group, and the company will change its print schedule to three days a week beginning in January 2013, the Patriot-News announced today. "At the same time, the organization will intensify its online and digital news-gathering efforts 24 hours a day, seven days a week", the Patriot-News says. A print edition will continue to be published on Sundays and the other two editions will be "on the scale of the current Sunday editions". Sunday circulation has fallen from 176,000 in 1992 to 118,000 today, and daily circulation has taken a similar plunge, according to the paper. A similar announcement was made today by the Syracuse Post-Standard.

No word yet from Advance's New Jersey group, which includes the Newark Star-Ledger, The Times of Trenton, and the NJ.com website, but it would not be surprising if they were the next to fall.

Obviously, with few exceptions the newspaper industry business model is still trying to find a bottom.

A personal note: as a child I delivered Advance Publications' flagship paper, the Staten Island Advance, and the Star-Ledger.



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