Dallas Morning News VP: In 3 years, we won’t print 7 days a week

Inland Press Association | Alan English
Mark Medici, vice president of audience for The Dallas Morning News, said Monday during a talk at the Inland Press Association conference in Chicago that the newspaper won’t print seven days a week in three years. Describing the News’ paid content strategy — the site’s paywall went up in March — Medici said, according to a live blog of the event, that the A.H. Belo-owned newspaper has seen a massive uptick in Sunday subscribers, “which is fine because we know in three years we won’t have a seven-day paper.” Sunday subscribers get full access to the website. (Thanks to Alan English, executive editor of The Augusta Chronicle, for alerting us via tweet). In March 2009, The Detroit Free Press (owned by Gannett) and The Detroit News (a MediaNews paper) started to deliver papers only three days a week — Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, when the papers have more ads and are popular with readers — although the papers are available every day on newsstands. Six months in, Poynter’s Bill Mitchell reported that the newspapers were not yet making money. I’ve emailed Medici for more information and will update if/when I learn more. || Update: James Moroney, publisher and CEO of the Dallas Morning News, tells me that Medici doesn’t recall saying such a thing and that it was either a “misstatement or a misunderstanding.” (Read his complete statement.)