By: E&P Staff Lee Enterprises is combining two Idaho dailies, The Times-News in Twin Falls and the South Idaho Press in Burley plus three weeklies into a single daily that will be called The Times-News.
The combined paper will launch Aug. 18.
With the merger, announced by Times-News Publisher Brad Hurd, 14 employees will be laid off. The merged paper and its Web site will employ a staff of 109, Hurd added.
The combined daily will have a daily zoned edition of news and advertising for Minidoka and Cassia Counties, which had been served by the South Idaho Press.
Hurd said readers in Lincoln, Gooding and Jerome counties who had been served by weekly newspapers there will find a weekly section focusing on their area.
"We intend to devote all of our resources into a single, stronger and more regional newspaper, opposed to spreading them out among a variety of papers," Hurd said in a statement.
The South Idaho Press, which will fold with its Aug. 16 edition, has a circulation of not quite 4,000, while The Times-News sells about 20,500 copies. Hurd noted that two of its weeklies have fewer than 600 subscribers.
"They have not been viable, financially," Hurd said. "No journalist likes the idea of closing a newspaper, but in doing so we will be able to concentrate our resources and give all of our communities a vibrant seven-day newspaper that will be better suited to meet the needs of a growing region."
In April, Lee sold the Wood River Journal in Hailey, Idaho, and shuttered two small weeklies.
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