Eyes on Detroit as News changes

Brian J. O'Connor / The Detroit News

The Detroit News embarks Monday on a bold experiment being closely watched not only by Metro Detroiters but by the struggling U.S. newspaper industry.

The News is replacing 136 years of daily home delivery with a business model that combines newsstand sales and limited home delivery with new and improved online digital editions. The move cuts costs but keeps the same number of reporters and editors covering the news, at a time when papers around the country are completely killing their print editions to go online, or closing their doors forever.

"We're beginning a new era Monday with the first of our express editions and I hope readers across the region will give the paper a good look," said Jonathan Wolman, editor and publisher of The News.

"Everybody knows that big-city newspapers are in an advertising funk, and we need to take extraordinary steps to fortify our newsroom resources," Wolman said. "The delivery changes are designed to preserve daily publication and expand on our digital presentations. Our goal is to provide a balance of spot news with in-depth and authoritative coverage of the events and issues that matter most to Michigan."

The News and its partner in the Detroit Media Partnership, The Detroit Free Press, switch to publishing newsstand-only editions four days a week. Home delivery of The News will be available on Thursday and Friday; the Free Press will also be available Sunday, when The News does not publish.

In place of home delivery on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, News subscribers can access a special "e-edition" of The News, a digital replica of the printed paper. The News also will continue to be available online at www.detnews.com, or as a mobile version for Smartphones at m.detnews.com.

The approach makes sense, said newspaper analyst John Morton, because daily newspapers only make profits three days a week.

"Newspapers that publish seven days a week don't make money every day," Morton said. "If you're going to do something like this, they certainly chose the right days. They knew what they were doing."

Morton added that he was impressed when the CEO of the Detroit Media Partnership, David Hunke, explained the strategy by saying budget cuts could no longer come from the newsrooms of The News and Free Press.

"I admire him for saying that," Morton said. "One thing that will hurt the future of newspapers is diminishing the journalism, which is what everybody's been doing."

In recent weeks the newspaper industry has seen the Rocky Mountain News shuttered in Denver, while The Christian Science Monitor and Seattle Post-Intelligencer dropped their print editions and moved to online-only operations. Closer to home, the Ann Arbor News said this week that it will close in July and be replaced by AnnArbor.com, which will publish news and other information daily online and twice-weekly in print. Papers in Flint, Saginaw and Bay City will cut print editions to three days a week.

The different approach being taken by The News and its partner is attracting intense interest from other publishers across the nation, said Bill Mitchell, head of the news transformation project at the Poynter Institute in Florida, a journalism think-tank.

"It's entirely possible that print will have a longer lifespan than some people give it credit for," said Mitchell, a former editor in Detroit. "This will be a pretty interesting way of finding out, if The News and Free Press can sustain three days of delivering print newspapers."

When the changes were announced three months ago, they were met with skepticism. But now, partnership CEO Hunke said, the worsening economy and state of newspapers has changed that perspective.

"There aren't a lot of people laughing at us," Hunke said. "My biggest regret is that we did not do this a year ago."

To kick off the new plan, 550,000 copies of The News and Free Press will be handed out for free Monday at retail outlets. After that, the papers will be available at 18,000 locations, including 200 senior centers, Hunke said.

Reach Personal Finance Editor Brian J. O'Connor: (313) 222-2145 or boconnor@detnews.com.