The Plain Dealer | Save The Plain Dealer | Cleveland Magazine
The Cleveland Plain Dealer will deliver papers only three times per week, but it will print every day, the paper announced Thursday. The change will come this summer.

The company will also reorganize as the Northeast Ohio Media Group, which will handle "advertising sales and marketing for The Plain Dealer, Cleveland.com and Sun newspapers," the announcement says. "And, Northeast Ohio Media Group will provide content for all print and digital products."

Plain Dealer science writer John Mangels described the changes as "bittersweet" in a phone call with Poynter. "It’s better than what we had expected," he said. In a newsroom meeting announcing the changes, Mangels said, management said planned layoffs would be delayed until late summer.

Plain Dealer staffers launched a campaign this past November they hoped woud ward off a move to three-day-a-week printing, which the paper's owner, Advance, has instituted at its papers in Alabama, New Orleans and Harrisburg, Pa. (more...)

CJR | WWLTV | St. Tammany News
"In a town rich in history and its own peculiarities, NOLA.com seems like an out-of-town visitor," Ryan Chittum writes in a extended look at the New Orleans Times-Picayune's new reality as an online-focused newsroom.

Rather than the reinvention the news organization's managers and owners see, Advance's reduction of print frequency and staff at the newspaper "looks like an orderly liquidation," Chittum writes. He says that "Web-production quotas" have been discussed and that the newspaper's quality has declined: (more...)

Editor George Spohr says "new circulation starts have been incredible" at The (Carlisle, Pa.) Sentinel since The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News reduced print frequency this month.

Spohr sent this picture of new sub orders and a note: "This is what happens when your competition goes to three days per week."

Seventy-six people subscribed Monday and more than 100 did Tuesday, Spohr wrote in an email to Poynter.

Spohr says Sentinel circulation director Phil Ferrara told him on a usual day, 10 people start subscriptions.

Figures from the Alliance for Audited Media show The Sentinel has an average Sunday circulation of 13,902 and an average circulation of 12,838 Monday-Saturday. The Patriot-News has an average Sunday circulation of 118,655 and average daily circulation of 70,446. (more...)

Nola.com | CBS | DashThirtyDash | Gambit Weekly
Before Sunday evening's "60 Minutes" story about the New Orleans Times-Picayune's reductions in staff and print frequency, Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss wrote a letter to readers saying the move seems like a success so far. He cited increased circulation and pageviews on Nola.com, the newspaper's website.

Average paid circulation is up both daily and Sunday for October and November 2012, the two most recent months since the change to the three-day print model, as compared to the average paid daily and Sunday circulation for September 2012, the most recent month before the change. ...

Meanwhile, NOLA.com's audience has continued to grow. In 2012, 41 million viewers came to NOLA.com, 7 million more viewers than in 2011.

(more...)

WWNO
On the New Orleans radio show "Out to Lunch" Monday, Nola.com business manager David Francis said The Times-Picayune's print circulation has gone up since it cut print frequency. "I will tell you that we’ve been pleasantly pleased with what we’ve seen since Oct. 1. when we launched the three-day-a-week newspaper," he told host Peter Ricchiuti.

We’ve seen a significant growth on the online side ... But also from a circulation standpoint the passion you talked about for the paper, in the 175 years we’ve been producing it, has resulted in actually an increase in our circulation. So those who were concerned about what this may mean to the community in terms of the local content they were used to getting from the Times-Picayune have found themselves embracing us again. So when we issued our first publication after we went to the three-day cycle we saw people’s attitudes and behaviors change. To the point now that we’re very satisfied and we’ve exceeded our targets in terms of circulation.

(more...)

The Sentinel | WHTM
The (Carlisle, Pa.) Sentinel and Harrisburg, Pa., TV station WHTM have struck a content-sharing agreement that they think will give them an upper hand when the competing (Harrisburg) Patriot-News goes to a three-day-per-week print schedule in January.

“There will be a real vacuum for people who like to read the newspaper seven days a week,” [WHTM] President and General Manager Joe Lewin said. “I think the regular subscribers to The Patriot-News feel abandoned, and I know that The Sentinel management sees this as a real opportunity.”

WHTM will provide the Sentinel with weather content, and both news organizations' stories can end up on both platforms. The Sentinel competes with the Patriot-News in Cumberland County, just west of Harrisburg. (more...)

The Sentinel | The Patriot-News | CNYCentral.com | YNN
The Advance-owned Patriot-News laid off "about 70" employees Monday, Stacy Brown reports for The (Carlisle, Pa.) Sentinel. Brown gets to that figure independently; Patriot-News publisher John Kirkpatrick tells him only, “Cuts were made in other areas related to the fact that the needs of the organization are different when you are printing three days a week, even if those papers look more like Sunday editions than daily editions."

The Harrisburg, Pa. paper reports some of the people who've been offered jobs with the new companies that will publish three days a week starting in January:

Many reporters familiar to readers are receiving job offers. Veteran and well-known journalists such as Jan Murphy, Charles Thompson, Bob Flounders, David Jones, Matt Miller, John Luciew, Joe Hermitt, Sean Simmers, Sue Gleiter, Andrew P. Shay, Tim Leone, Ivey DeJesus, Jeanette Krebs, David Wenner, Robert Vickers, Heather Long and Pulitzer Prize winner Sara Ganim were among those offered jobs. (more...)

The Patriot-News | The Post-Standard
Employees at the (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News and the (Syracuse, N.Y.) Post-Standard will find out Monday whether they'll be kept on at new companies that will publish print newspapers three days per week. In Pennsylvania, employees will meet in person with managers:

“The excitement and challenge of starting new companies that can meet the rapidly changing needs of our readers, advertisers and the community are taking a distant back seat today to the needs of dealing the best we can with each person on our staff,” said Patriot-News Publisher and President John Kirkpatrick, who will become president of PA Media Group. “We are all aware that this is an extremely difficult moment for each and every person in our organization.”

70 percent of The Patriot-News' employees will stay on, an unbylined article says. The company will hire 51 new positions, and those laid off "will also be allowed to apply" for them, the article says.

Employees in Syracuse are also expected to learn their fates today. "[A]bout 60" new jobs will be created there, according to the Post-Standard.

Both papers will begin their new schedules in January. Their corporate siblings in New Orleans and Alabama began printing on a reduced schedule Monday.