Four Atlantic Canada newspapers will end their Monday print editions
Chief operating officer cites high costs of printing, transportation and delivery as reasons for the move
SaltWire Network is ending the Monday print edition for four Atlantic Canada newspapers.
The Chronicle Herald in Halifax, The Cape Breton Post in Sydney, N.S., The Guardian in Charlottetown and The Telegram in St. John's will no longer have a Monday print edition.
The media company cites increasing inflation on print operations and rising fuel costs as some of the factors in the decision.
Chief operating officer Ian Scott said in a statement on Monday that the media company was "responding to the market demand for how and where people want to see their content."
"We've had at least six [price] increases this year, whereas we would have seen two [increases] in the preceding two years," Scott said of the price of paper in an interview Tuesday.
"Our audience size is very significantly larger online than it is [for] the printed paper and the Monday [edition] is the smaller of the printed editions," Scott added.
He said that the move will lower costs for the company, but will not affect staffing at the four newsrooms.
With the savings from the change, Scott said the company intends to put more efforts toward its digital platforms, with a focus on producing more multimedia pieces. In place of the print editions on Monday, the four publications will have an exact digital replica of the physical paper, which he said has the benefit of being more accessible, allowing readers to listen to stories out loud or translate them into other languages, among other options.
SaltWire says the decision will take effect on Oct. 17, but there will not be a print publication on Thanksgiving Monday, as usual.
The move comes just weeks after fellow Canadian media company Postmedia Network announced nine of its urban daily newspapers would no longer be printed and delivered on Mondays.
That decision affected the Monday editions of The Vancouver Sun, The Province, Calgary Herald, Calgary Sun, Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Sun and Montreal Gazette.
Decisions falls in line with with a 20-year trend
It's "not surprising" that SaltWire would make this move, said David Swick, a journalism professor at the University of King's College, as about 80 per cent of Canadians receive their news online instead of print.
"This trend has been going on for 20 years," Swick said in an interview Tuesday. "We're in a digital revolution and print is the one that's taking it in the neck. This is really sad for people who love to spread out the newspaper before them, and I'm one of those people, but it's not a surprise in any way."
He said it's long been the case that circulation drops on Mondays for print editions, as well as the number of advertisements that run in the paper. He expects more publications will make the same decision in the coming months and years.
