Syracuse (WSYR-TV) – The Post-Standard announced Tuesday morning that, beginning next year, the newspaper will only be published and delivered to homes and newsstands three days per week. A smaller version of the newspaper will be available in Onondaga County on the other four days.
The
article posted on Syracuse.com indicated that the paper will be published and distributed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. It did not specify the form the “smaller version” would take or what its method of distribution would be.
The changes are part of a restructuring that will bring the newspaper and the website under the same umbrella. The new company will be called Syracuse Media Group.
In a world gravitating toward digital information, the Post-Standard's publisher says a printed copy of the paper could not survive long-term.
"What we're trying to do, and I think with some success, is increase the ad revenue online to begin to compensate the loss of revenue from print,” Post-Standard Publisher and Editor Steve Rogers told NewsChannel 9.
SU Professor David Rubin says, "This is a push to get everybody online. For my students, this won't mean anything because they don't read a paper anyway and they think I'm just a hopeless old moss-back for carrying around a newspaper."
SU Professor David Rubin isn't surprised by the changes, which have hit news operations in every form. In cost cutting moves, local programming on radio is being replaced by nationally syndicated shows. In television, channels 3 and 5 merged news operations in 2009. At the Post-Standard, workers are still waiting to find out who stays and who goes.
Syracuse Media Group will move out of the newspaper’s iconic building in Downtown Syracuse. The post on Syracuse.com did not indicate where the new location would be.
According to the website, the newspaper and its website will adopt a new business model “focused on providing news, information and advertising in digital format 24 hours every day.”
They said the “smaller version” program would be subject to review in the future and could potentially be eliminated in 2013.
A second company is being formed from the new arrangement, Advance Central Services Syracuse. The company will provide “production, circulation, accounting, human resources, information systems and other functions to support the Syracuse Media Group.”
Advance Central Services Syracuse will occupy the building that currently houses The Post-Standard.
