MediaNews Group, the nation's fourth largest newspaper chain, is testing a specially-developed home printer for possible use in combination with reduced printing and delivery on certain days of the week.
The
Detroit News, owned by MediaNews, and the Gannett-owned
Detroit Free Press will eliminate home delivery four days a week beginning March 31. MediaNews said it will conduct its first test of the new printer this summer at its paper in Los Angeles,
The Daily News.
MediaNews properties also include the San Jose
Mercury News and the
Denver Post, which
reports the printer experiment today.
Reduced printing and delivery have huge implications for newspaper business models.
In
an e-mail exchange with Rick Edmonds on the Biz Blog this morning,
Christian Science Monitor editor John Yemma describes preparations for that paper's switch from daily print to the combination of a weekly print magazine and a daily Web product.
"Our greatest expense is printing and delivering a newspaper," MediaNews exec Mark Winkler told the
Post. "Eliminating it four days a week would be significant. About 65 or 70 percent of a newspaper's revenues come from ad sales on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, so we'll keep printing on those days."
Winkler also told the paper that I-News could be used to deliver customized news to a computer or cell phone.
I'm glad to see this being explored. It could be...
