By: E&P Staff The McPherson (Kan.) Sentinel said Wednesday it is dropping its Monday edition, making the paper the latest GateHouse Media Inc.-owned daily to drop Mondays in cutting costs.
"With skyrocketing newsprint and fuel prices, the writing was on the wall that we were going to have to do something drastic to keep our expenses in line," Publisher Gary Mehl said in a statement. "To cut one publishing day has been one of the most difficult decisions of my 43-year career at The Sentinel.
"I have wrestled for some time with this and ultimately had to come to the realization that in order to remain financially stable, I had no choice but to eliminate our weakest publishing day," he added.
The Sentinel will not publish next Monday and will become a five-day paper, publishing Tuesdays through Saturdays.
Mehl said the cut in frequency won't affect content or page count, though he said some syndicated features will be dropped. The paper will "be making a major effort to focus on more local stories," he added.
Other GateHouse papers in Kansas are also dropping "at least" one publishing day, Mehl said, including The Augusta Daily Gazette; The Derby Reporter; The El Dorado Times; and the Wellington Daily News.
Two GateHouse papers in Illinois announced in recent weeks they are dropping Monday editions.
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