Detroit papers drop home delivery to 3 days a week
By ED WHITE
DETROIT (AP) — Fighting to stay in business, Detroit's two daily newspapers will radically change their relationship with readers by slashing home delivery to three days a week, printing small editions on other days and encouraging people to get information online.
The Detroit market is the largest in the country to undergo that transformation. But it reflects a calculation facing newspapers across the country, with print circulation dropping as readers increasingly get their news on the Internet.
By curtailing home delivery on certain days, the papers reduce printing, fuel and labor expenses for editions that tend to attract fewer advertisements.
The chief executive of Detroit Media Partnership, which runs the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, said the move announced Tuesday was not an experiment. He predicted it would succeed in keeping two papers alive.
"I don't think we're ever going back," said David Hunke, who also is publisher of the Free Press.
If it fails, "I'm fired and I may have led two great institutions down the wrong path," he said. "It's a huge risk. It's disruptive to folks. I understand that."
But the newspapers, he said, can't afford to wait. Detroit Media Partnership is losing millions of dollars this year, and Michigan has been hammered by home foreclosures, high unemployment and the near-collapse of the auto industry.
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