
Notice from the Sherbrooke Record published April 22 saying it would move to a once-a-week schedule.
Quebec’s other English-language daily newspaper will soon no longer be that. This week, the Sherbrooke Record sent a letter to subscribers saying it would only produce print editions on Fridays starting in May.
Currently, the Record publishes in print five days a week (Monday to Friday).
The letter from publisher Sharon McCully explicitly states that “this is not a reduction in news” and breaking news would still be produced online. Instead, it is a way to cut production costs that are increasingly hard to justify for many daily newspapers. Others like La Presse and La Tribune, Sherbrooke’s French-language daily, have already eliminated print editions entirely and gone fully online.
The decision can’t come as much of a surprise. The paper has a community weekly feel to it anyway, and recent non-Friday editions have been only 12 pages long. Being a daily print publication comes with some prestige, but we’re long past the point when that prestige is worth the cost. (And La Presse and others have shown that you can still have that prestige even if you don’t have the paper.)
Brome County News, which was distributed with the Tuesday edition of the Record, will still be produced and distributed on Tuesdays, the note reads, and will also be included in the Friday Record along with the Record’s weekend edition.
UPDATE: In an interview with CBC’s Quebec AM, publisher Sharon McCully points to various reasons for the change, including the fact that the Record could no longer share distribution resources with the Montreal Gazette and had to rely on Canada Post instead, increasing those costs.

