Prairie, Plains Papers Make the Move to Mornings

In late May, a small six-day paper in Iowa converted from afternoon to morning publication. One month from now and 1,600 miles to the northwest, another, somewhat larger six-day paper, in Canada, will join the decades-long trend to morning delivery.

After 170 years, Lee Enterprises' Muscatine Journal moved to morning publication last week, but not without a few bumps along the way, according to Editor Chris Steinbach, who reported his publisher, Bob Blackman, and many others from the office out delivering copies at dawn for much of the week.

Noting that a thousand calls were received during the first four days from readers waiting for their papers, Steinbach said the paper's delivery chief, Brenda Radosevich, and others were up to the challenge, and that the calls represented a sustained healthy market for the printed newspaper, which circulates approximately 6,300 copies weekdays, 7,400 on Saturday.

(Steinbach concluded his column with an anecdote, condensed here: "Habits become firmly entrenched when the newspaper arrives every afternoon for generations. John, who works in Muscatine and has been a subscriber to both the Journal and its sister newspaper in Davenport, the Quad-City Times, for more than 30 years, developed his own routine: Read the Times in the morning with coffee and breakfast, go to work, come home at the end of the day and drink a beer while reading the Journal. Worried what he would do now that both newspapers are published in the morning, John solved his dilemma by putting his Journal in the refrigerator, next to the beer. He goes about his regular routine and when he comes home, the beer and the newspaper are both waiting for him. John is my kind of guy.")

On July 1, The Red Deer (Alberta) Advocate also plans to switch to morning delivery, aiming reaching readers by 6:30 at their homes and at newsstands.

Explaining the changes to readers, Publisher Fred Gorman on Friday said the paper's youth carriers no longer will deliver the daily, which is switching to carriers with vehicles. But calling the younger carriers "a tremendous asset to our organization," and noting that "for many, the income and first job experience is very important to them and their families," Gorman said the paper was able to offer them flyer routes.

The publisher further noted that the change was made amid "intense" competition for readers in a market with six morning dailies and the expectation of real-tie reporting on news Websites. The Advocate circulates approximately 16,000 copies.

Said Gorman, "Our recent NADBank research study showed that 70% of people in our market view one of our products at least once a week. We believe we can expand this number even higher with morning delivery."