Reuters reports that the National Post has decided to stop printing on Mondays for nine weeks this summer. The move is an effort to save money for the paper which has been bleeding money out of debt-ridden Canwest (my employer) since it launched a decade ago.
Canwest says the move will involve no layoffs. A digital edition, which looks identical to the print edition, will still be produced, CP says, meaning the stories will still be written and laid out, but simply won’t be printed.
The Post already doesn’t publish on Sundays, meaning important news that breaks on a Saturday morning will have to wait up to 72 hours before it’s in the hands of readers.
Canwest has until May 5 to deal with its lenders (or get yet another extension).
UPDATE (May 2): The Post explains itself in a note to readers.
It looks as though this paper is on a steady course to become a magazine and not a paper.
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It seems odd to still produce a digital, print-like version of the paper, but just to avoid printing it.
I’ll be very curious to see what people will do. Will they actually read the digital edition? Will they go online but just peruse the website with its web-organized info? Or will they forget to visit the website altogether?
Also, I’d be curious to see if magazines’ digital editions fare better than newspapers’ just because the format of a print magazine is closer to that of a computer monitor.
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