By: Mark Fitzgerald The Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown, Pa., published on Christmas Day for the first time ever Sunday, and announced it would publish 365 days a year from now on.
Publisher Chris Voccio said Tuesday that the decision to publish on Christmas was the final end to a long tradition of not publishing on five holidays a year.
"We had a very bizarre situation in the past where we would not publish on Easter, New Year's, Memorial Day, July 4th, and Christmas," Voccio said in a telephone interview. "I was told when I inherited this job that because of union contracts it wouldn't have been profitable to publish on those days.
"But we did a little digging, and found it would have been profitable," he added.
In 2004, the 41,000-circulation paper began publishing on all holidays except Christmas. There was concern there might be "pushback" from carriers and readers about Christmas publication, but that hasn't proven the case, Voccio said: "We're glad we did it."
In a note to readers, Voccio wrote: "We found that our readers missed the paper on holidays, and many of them were actually reading a paper on the holidays, only they were reading some other paper."
The Tribune-Democrat is owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI).
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