In the span of just two days, Salt Lake City learned that it would join the list of American cities without a daily newspaper after both of its major papers said they would stop printing a daily edition at the end of the year. reports The NYTimes.
The Deseret News will instead print a weekly edition, as well as a monthly magazine, its editor, Doug Wilks, said in an op-ed article on Tuesday. That news came the day after the city’s other major newspaper, The Salt Lake Tribune, announced that it would switch from a daily printing schedule to a weekly one.
The newspapers said that on Dec. 31 they would end a 68-year-old partnership that allowed them to collaborate on printing, delivery and advertising. Utah Media Group, which manages the printing operations, told its 161 employees on Monday about “the coming end of the printing company, detailing severance packages,” The Deseret News reported.
The change will end a nearly 150-year run of daily newspaper delivery for The Tribune.
The Deseret News, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been printing for nearly 170 years. It started as a “small weekly sheet” in 1850, three years after the territory it is named for was declared, Mr. Wilks wrote. It became a daily in 1865.
The economic decline caused by the coronavirus pandemic has pummeled a local newspaper industry already struggling with declining revenues, layoffs and pay reductions in newsrooms across the country.
David Noyce, the interim editor of The Tribune, told readers in an email that the paper was making the change to position itself financially for the future and that the change would not result in any reduction of its newsroom staff.
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